


All that is now, all that is gone

by lindmere



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-04
Updated: 2012-07-06
Packaged: 2017-11-09 03:26:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/450728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindmere/pseuds/lindmere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Hulk seriously injures Tony during a mission, Tony must decide whether he can trust the Hulk again--or Bruce.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sincere thanks to [emluv](http://archiveofourown.org/users/emluv) and [merisunshine36](http://archiveofourown.org/users/merisunshine36) for their beta work and assistance with the Marvel universe, to which I am completely new.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who commented on the Avengers Kink Meme where this originally appeared, most especially [stargazer_7](http://stargazer-7.livejournal.com), who created [beautiful fanart](http://stargazer-7.livejournal.com/3828.html) for the story (slightly spoilery for chapter 4).

The one thing Tony never tells Bruce is how completely, exhilaratingly shit-scared he is of the Hulk.

It’s never a problem when Bruce is just Bruce. Bruce’s head is stuffed with bullshit theories about his alter ego--protection of a damaged child, a perverse kind of self-glorification, monsters from the id. When Bruce lets them drop in that offhand, disinterested way he has with anything that concerns his own suffering, Tony listens and nods and feels his opinion of psychology as a “science” drop another 10 points. 

Bruce is the most genuinely kind person he’s ever met. Tony’s never regarded that as a strength, but he understands now how wrong he was. Among the other, more profound things, it’s magnetically appealing in a way that makes Tony a little jealous. But the rumpled chivalry, the shy hopefulness--any look that depends on selflessness and modesty is a look he’ll never be able to pull off.

But the Hulk, on the other hand, reminds Tony of the first time he saw a missile test. It was a birthday present from his dad, the chance to go out to Nevada and watch an H-bomb bloom in the desert. He’d been so excited, not able to conceive of anything beyond the world’s biggest _boom_ , looking forward to that pure violent rush that’s fuel to little boys. And then he saw it, silent at first, ugly beyond belief, a ball of pure, white horror swelling to consume the world. He’d clutched at his father’s wool trouser leg, and his father had gripped his shoulder and whispered, “ _Isn’t it beautiful?_ ”

The Hulk fills him with that same vibrating awe, an elemental horror that is, at its core, a desire to possess. Tony fights that impulse, because the Hulk isn’t a weapon, he’s a being--of what kind, Tony doesn’t know. Bruce treats the Other Guy as a balloon of unreasoning rage, but then among Bruce’s ridiculous theories is the idea that he’s some monster of anger himself. Tony knows that any random person he grabs off the streets of New York could be angrier than Bruce--at the person who elbowed her on the subway, the cabbie who wouldn’t take him to LaGuardia. For a guy who’s spent so much time studying himself and being studied, Bruce is pretty much an idiot when it comes to self knowledge. So why should Tony trust him when it comes to his other half? 

Still, Tony stays away from the Hulk in the midst of battle, leaves the wrangling of the rage monster to gods and soldiers. It’s Bruce he looks after, when the green balloon pops and it’s just his friend, naked and sheepish inside a crater or on top of a pile of rubble. Tony’s pretty sure he’d be jumping up and down on that pile of rubble if it were him, yelling _Look at me, look what I did_. The naked part would be the icing. But there’s no destructive little boy inside of Bruce. He’s the one who should have the glowing heart, not Tony. And Tony could be a hell of a monster, he’s sure of it.

+++++

Bruce is wearing a cable-knit sweater, which is appropriate for the weather but ridiculous for a member of a superhero team. Tony offered, once, to have something made for him--easy when you know the world’s top industrial designers and supermodels. But Bruce had shrugged and smiled and said, “I like not having to watch what I eat,” and then, “besides, I have a _great_ costume, and I never have to send it out to the cleaners.”

“Romanoff and Barton will lead the way; Stark, Rogers and Thor will stay close behind in case they encounter resistance while they’re disarming the security perimeter.” Nick Fury is in his stand-and-deliver stance, hands clasped behind his back, eye focusing on each of them in turn as if their attention could somehow wander in the close confines of a submarine. “Banner, you’ll be on standby. In case of the unexpected.”

“Sure,” Bruce says. “I fully expect it.” 

Tony doesn’t understand why Fury is repeating all this, since they were all involved in the planning and have the attack sequence planned down to the microsecond. Maybe it’s plausible deniability, so that when things go inevitably and excitingly wrong, he can remind the generals that they were all fully briefed. He’s surprised that Fury doesn’t make them all sign a waiver.

What Tony _does_ understand is that it’s fucking _cold_ a thousand meters deep in the Amundsen Sea. He prefers the kind of supervillains who hole up in Vegas or L.A. The North Pole, even--it was good enough for bad guys in his father’s day. But no, this supervillain (who at least isn’t calling himself the Penguin, _gracias a Dios_ ) has set himself up in the Transantarctic mountains, forcing Tony to add an enhanced climate control system to the suit, along with hot chocolate pods for the espresso maker.

They pile into the Triops sub-launched helicopter (courtesy of Stark Industries, another lucrative government contract, and another robust quarter of double-digit growth). Bruce helps them load equipment like the good team player that he is, even though he’s likely to be stuck carrying the Gatorade this time around. They’ve got a map of the lair that’s detailed to the level of the villain’s hair follicles, thanks to a friend of Fury’s with X-ray vision. In and out, that’s the way Tony likes it, and says so often enough to make Steve blush and Thor puzzled. 

“It’s lucky we don’t need you this time around,” Natasha says, giving a sideways glance at Bruce, who’s in his _socks_ , for God’s sake. “This isn’t exactly shorts weather.”

Then the sub breaches and there’s a lot of noise and cold that goes right to Tony’s teeth before he can pull his visor down. That last thing he sees as the chopper ascends is Bruce giving him a little _ta-ta for now_ wave, the way his mom used to when he went riding. He’d always felt a bit guilty, knowing what he was about to get up to. He feels the same way now.

+++++

It turns out that Fury’s X-ray friend can only see living beings as blobs, which is a reasonable explanation for why the “guard dogs” on the map turn out to be mutant albino superwolves. One of them manages to take a bite out of Clint before Tony and Thor start blasting and clobbering, respectively, but there are a _lot_ of them, snarly and horrifying but also kind of fun to fire at, like a video game. That may be why Tony doesn’t notice the _other_ thing, the thing that casts a shadow like the Matterhorn and moves with the slow, deliberate pace of a forest on the march.

It’s barely humanoid, identifiable only by the vaguest of outlines, a body and limbs and a head like a snow shelf ready to be let loose in an avalanche. Instead of eyes it has a single, probing searchlight, and where the searchlight sweeps an icy blast of destruction follows.

“Fall back to entry point, retreat Alpha six.” Natasha says inside his helmet. Tony’s still not completely down with the military code but it sounds cooler than “Run away.” 

“Good idea,” he says, really, really looking forward to getting some speed and distance and altitude on this thing that’s barrelling behind them like a ski slope that wants to ski _him_. “While we’re at it, can we call Bruce and tell him to suit up?”

“Already on it,” she calls back. He likes that about Natasha; she doesn’t waste words. They’re all getting the fuck out of there by various means, Steve carrying Clint, Natasha running and dodging, Tony under his own power, and when they burst out of the tunnel, Tony’s never been so happy to see icy cold nothing, and--

A tower of green, barely visible in the twilight. A big, green, scary, crazy monster, but he’s _their_ scary, crazy monster. And he’s an unstoppable force that Tony will put against any immovable object, although the mutant yeti seems to move pretty well.

“All yours, big guy,” Tony yells, and clears out of the way just in time not to get buried as the yeti crashes into the open air. 

He coughs some snow out of his windpipe and is just settling in for the best monster battle ever when he notices a weird radiation reading coming off the yeti. It’s not all _that_ strange that a mutant monster would come with bonus radioactivity. But it _is_ strange that there would be that much, and concentrated in--

 _Oh, shit_.

“It’s a bomb!” he yells to nobody and everybody. “There’s a bomb inside that creature! It’s--” The yeti is a boobytrapped teddy bear designed to take out the Big Guy, he’s sure of it. Just as sure as he is that the Big Guy is eating this up, blood running hot at the chance to take on something his own size.

Tony wonders, briefly, if Bruce got a chance to take off the sweater before he transformed. He kind of liked the sweater.

Natasha’s set a couple of Cryolight flares so that they can see the battlefield. The two creatures are circling each other, the Hulk clenching his fists and baring his teeth in that weirdly morphed version of Bruce’s lopsided smile. The second they make contact there’s going to be monster blood and fur everywhere, and nothing will be able to stop them.

Thor’s already in there, doing the special effects show, trying to distract the yeti. Steve’s gone, probably taking Clint back to the boat. If Thor can’t bring the creature down--and he can’t--then it’s only a matter of time before the Hulk gets impatient and takes matters into his own hands.

Tony decides to beat him to it. He slides his visor down and accelerates to the edge of the blazing white circle. 

“Hey!” he yells, waving his arms, the way you do to make yourself look big in front of a bear. “Over here! Listen to me!” 

Hulk is admittedly not too good with the multitasking. He looks away from the creature--currently semi-visible inside a pretty nifty tornado--and cocks his head, listening (or so Tony hopes).

“That’s right, that’s good, Big Guy. You’ve got to trust me on this--that yeti thing? I know it looks like chocolate ice cream to you--vanilla--whatever. There’s a bomb inside. You hear me? A _bomb_ , as in, _kaboom_. So we’re going to have to walk away from this one. Got it?”

The answer seems to be _no_. He frowns at Tony, eyebrows like industrial-sized caterpillars, trying to understand. Somewhere inside this tank of green muscle is Bruce’s brain, but Tony’s never been sure where, or how much, and the speed of the neurons is bounded by the speed of light--or, put another way, the Hulk is unlikely to ever finish a _New York Times_ Sunday crossword puzzle.

Just then, the yeti makes a lunge from under its personal weather system, its claws raking against the Hulk’s tough hide, not enough to pierce the skin, but apparently enough to hurt. 

Pain is something the Big Guy understands very well. Betrayal is another. Like what he might feel in that highly reactive nervous system if he rubbed two thoughts together, and those thoughts were _Puny man distract Hulk_ and _Big Monster take tactical advantage of distraction_. In other words, really pissed.

For once, Tony and the Hulk seem to be thinking in sync as easily as Tony and Bruce usually do. It takes the commands longer to reach the Big Guy’s limbs, but then, when he raises a giant hand to swat Tony back to the ground as he tries to fly away, it has the same effect as when a human swats a moth. Speed isn’t always an advantage. An _advantage_ is an advantage, and by any measure of Hulk’s advantages, Tony is well and truly fucked.

The body slam into the ground isn’t really a problem, not with a billion little nanites doing their anti-grav thing. Tony plays dead in the snow, hoping the Big Guy will get back to monster business, but then he feels an iron hand close around both ankles, and he’s hoisted in the air, dangling head down like a very expensive Peking duck.

There are a few moves he could try-- _would_ try, if they were in the lab or training center--but he decides to stick with what’s worked in the past, which is to let the Hulk shake him around like a rag doll to see if he’ll do something interesting. He doesn’t take it personally; most of the team, at some point, have been swatted away like pesky insects or inspected as if they might be edible. Bruce usually compares the Hulk to a furious toddler, but Tony considers him more like a badly trained dog, grasping the broad outlines of right and wrong but not sure how to apply them.

That fine theory disappears in a rush of wind as the Hulk swings him around like a club and uses him to clobber the yeti. The first few whacks have no real effect other than to give Tony a few seconds to admire the Hulk’s commendable problem solving in combatting an annoyance and an enemy at the same time. 

Then the retinal display decides to pass along some interesting information about the composition of the yeti’s “fur.” It’s actually long, thin tubes of lonsdaleite, one of the three known substances stronger than diamond. Tony didn’t know that it could be made so fine and flexible, or that it could shred the surface of the suit, though he probably could have guessed. The impact is throwing warnings up left, right, and center, quality programming work but otherwise useless.

Five, eight, ten good whacks upside the yeti and Tony is feeling like a coconut ready to crack. As the Hulk whips Tony over his shoulder, winding up, Tony sees the red of Thor’s cape streaming through the green and white, but it’s too late. With the next blow, the suit shivers and falls away, the nanites sifting away like coal dust.

Tony feels skin and bone destroyed at the same time, one from the impact of the blow and the other from the diamond-like needles of the yeti’s fur. They drag like a million tiny rakes across the skin of his back and shoulders, Tony having been quick enough (just) to cover his face. His scream blends with the creature’s; they’re both in terrible trouble, though the yeti is some robot-mutant and Tony is (at the last) a being of soft flesh and blood. 

And the Hulk? Whatever else he may be, the Hulk is Bruce. Now, in the last moment of his life, Tony still remembers.

He opens his eyes a couple of times after that, not in the the good _thank God that’s over_ way but in the bad _something went seriously wrong in my life and still isn’t any better_ way. 

The first time is the worst, because he’s being moved, and he wants to scream _for fuck’s sake leave me alone_ to the people attached to the boots carrying him across the snowy waste. He _is_ screaming, and with good reason, because it feels like he’s opened up from neck to waist, every nerve ending exposed to the air. The cold feels good for the first few seconds and then it’s like a second wave of violence, this one on a molecular level, determined not to stop until he’s been ground to dust like his suit. It not only doesn’t stop, it gets worse, because the secret of life is that it can _always_ get worse, and if he could form a sentence it would be _I know one of you assholes has a sidearm, please_ use _it_. But he can’t, and so it’s like the mind-crushing agony version of being seasick, no ambition save what his body wants: to be put out of its misery, by drug or death.

About a thousand years later, he gets the drug. It sweeps through his body like a warm wave, a sweet, rolling, Caribbean tide. The pain doesn’t just stop, it transmutes into something beautiful: a cloudless sunset, a bed with crisp white sheets, pale curtains swelling in the breeze. The air itself is like a pillow he can rest on, the way he’s never been happy just resting in his whole life--

There’s a pinch on his arm, easy to ignore. Then the dappled shade turns into bright, white light and noise, a hard _chop chop chop_ and there’s a surge of energy going through his veins, the veins that apparently still exist along with the rest of his body, and on some level he knows the damage is still there but he feels _amazing_ , blood like molten gold, brain whirling into overdrive like when he’s on one of his benders in the lab, except that he can’t get any thoughts to stick around for more than a millisecond. They spin around his head like supercharged fireflies, and then he’s rising--no, _ascending_ , feeling the pull against gravity the way he can’t in the suit, but the blaze is so familiar--

This is the way death should be--Tony Stark’s death, anyway: amazing, transcendent, the Valkyrie sweeping him up to Valhalla just the way Thor told him they would because Tony is a warrior, a baller to the end, and _his_ Valkyrie have metal bikinis. Fuck crashing into the ground, fuck wasting away in a hospital bed, fuck quiet desperation and the taste of metal in your mouth, because _this_ \--this is speed and antigravity, this is tracer comets and cheerleaders--this is motherfucking _Death_ , a Tony Stark Production. 

+++++

When he wakes up again, his first thought is surprise and the second is profound disappointment. He’s still lying face down because apparently lying on his back is a thing of the past, but at least his head is turned to the side, so that he can see, left to right, a plain white wall, Nick Fury, and a metal nightstand holding a plastic water pitcher. All those things seem equally tedious, so he closes his eyes again, hoping to maybe catch a stray Valkyrie waiting for the bus home.

“Stark,” Fury says, with uncharacteristic quietness. “You awake?”

“I’m dead,” Tony says, keeping his eyes closed. “Can’t you tell the difference?”

“You feeling like you are? Because I can get one of the docs in here to give you something--”

“No,” Tony says with a sigh. It’s tempting, because Tony’s got some heavy though mundane aches and pains, plus the prospect of days (maybe weeks or months) of serious boredom, but he knows he’s got some weaknesses in that direction. “Some water would be good, though.” 

He sounds weird to himself, like a duck that’s been smoking. “No, don’t pour it, call a nurse,” he says, as Fury moves with undue haste toward the water pitcher. He doesn’t like the image, it’s--too solicitous, or apologetic, or something; too latent with bad news. “Hey, where are my fucking flowers? Something like this happens, and the team doesn’t even send flowers?”

“Have they told you what ‘this’ is?” Fury says, getting straight to the point as usual.

Tony feels a childish desire not to know, because then it will be real. As it is, he’s got nothing--no sense of time, or of the extent of his injuries, and only a blurry smear of what happened--something involving an ice monster and the Hulk and a lot of smashing and Not Good.

“Go ahead,” he says finally. “You know you want to.”

“Twelve broken bones, including six ribs and your back. No spinal cord damage, no brain damage, nothing neural. But your skin--” Fury rubs his hands together like he’s limbering up for surgery. “It’s a good thing you know people who know people who know a lot about tissue cloning.”

Fury’s not the sugar-coating type, so Tony figures that this information plus the fact that he’s alive (albeit in some kind of high-tech traction) are in fact the extent of the bad news, at least as far as it concerns him.

“Am I still pretty? Will girls still like me?” Tony asks, and Fury’s face changes from nominal sympathy to you’re-a-wiseass scowl. “Never mind, I’m still rich. How is everybody?”

“The team is fine. Everybody made it back in one piece--except you, of course. And the mission was successful.”

“Yay, us.” Tony could strain a muscle trying to care about the mission, but that would just extend his recovery time. 

“How much do you remember?” 

“Well, if I don’t remember, I don’t know, do I?” Now that he knows nothing’s blowing up, he feels annoyed and peevish. The skin on his back itches, the nurse hasn’t shown up with water, and he’d give one of his Cezannes to be able to shift position. 

“Think,” Fury says, like it’s an order. 

He remembers snow. He remembers a bad guy and a typically convoluted plan to take him out. He remembers guard dogs and things going quickly and dramatically to hell. He remembers--

He remembers.

There’s a long silence during which Fury holds his gaze steady, as Tony’s brain replays the battle, as if it were an old movie with blips and skipped frames: the yeti creature attacking, Tony pissing off the Hulk, the Hulk using Tony as a club to tee off on the yeti, and then a lot of major league pain and probably blood and screaming as well. There’s a lot that’s wrong with the picture, a lot that will probably give Tony nightmares once he’s allowed to have them. There are a lot of gaps and questions, too, but one stands out in the crowd.

“How’s Bruce?”

Fury nods tightly, like he’s been expecting it. “He’s unharmed.”

Tony’s stomach does a queasy roll, and not because of the hospital food. “He’s unharmed” isn’t something you say about a regular person, a friend; it’s something you say about a hostage. 

“Where is he?”

Now Fury’s good eye is looking everywhere but at Tony. “We had to put him somewhere secure until we can figure out why the Hulk turned on you. We’ve got human and animal behaviorists, psychologists, you name it--”

“God _damn_ it.” Tony’s anger burns suddenly hot, and his muscles clench enough to pop a few stitches. “Where do you have him, in one of those supervillain fishbowls? Guards ‘round the clock, year-old magazines, no contact with the outside world?”

“It’s not that bad,” Fury says, looking like he’s prepared to physically restrain Tony if necessary, which given the situation is a laugh. “We had a containment facility built after Banner joined the team. It’s perfectly humane, there’s even a computer--”

“Yeah, I get it, it’s a jail. With a bunch of numbnuts ‘researchers’ hooking him up to E-meters and asking him to think about--” Tony stops, and sucks in a little air, because he knows immediately what Bruce is thinking about in his adamantine holding tank. He’s thinking about how he hurt Tony--how the Hulk hurt Tony--and internalizing the guilt in the way that only someone with the brain of a genius and the conscience of a Buddhist monk could. The Hulk does Bruce’s damage or takes it, depending on the situation, and Bruce is left in the smoking crater to clean up the physical and metaphysical damage. “How soon can I see him?” Tony asks finally.

“As soon as you’re mobile. A few weeks, maybe? I don’t know, you should ask your doc. But really, he’s all right. People have been visiting him. He’s in good spirits.”

Fury knows about every technology ever invented to break things, but he knows shit about Bruce Banner. The Hulk is a weapon that happens to live inside Bruce’s body, and Bruce deals with that because he has no choice. He’s not throwing his metal trays of meatloaf and two veg at the wall because he knows it won’t do any good, but the frustration is still building. Construing that as being in “good spirits” is so wrong that it makes Tony’s skin itch ten times worse than before.

“Right. Sure. And hey, at least we put an end to the horrifying reign of--what was that guy’s name?”

“He called himself ‘Ice Age’.”

“Jesus, what a stupid villain name. He deserved to go down just for that.” Suddenly Tony is very tired, in general and of having Fury in the room. “Please go away now, and send in someone prettier with some freaking water.”

Fury nods and departs, leaving Tony alone with a blank wall and a deep wish not to think for a while. Unfortunately, thinking is the only thing he has to do. He and Bruce have at least that much in common.


	2. Chapter 2

“Making the nanites _smart_? But wouldn’t that create a risk? What if you were getting ready to go underwater, and meanwhile the nanites were acquiring mass as fast as they could to harden the alpha-layer casing?”

Pepper’s got a point, although Tony’s not going to admit that out loud. She may not be a scientist or an engineer, but she’s amazing at finding faulty logic and risk factors. She’s got a bottom line, which Tony--being infinitely rich and infinitely smart--doesn’t. She’s also got a ragingly cute body, which is why it’s fun to work side-by-side with her in his full-sized adjustable bed. 

In the course of three weeks, he’s gradually replaced everything in the hospital room, taking the proverbial mile from the inch he was given (permission to use an iPad). Now he’s got his own tower computer, projection displays, Barcelona chairs for visitors, and his own chef installed in the kitchen. Five days ago he was allowed to roll over onto his back, and he counts it one of the happiest days of his life.

“Not smart like _me_ ,” he says. “Not even smart like _you_. Machine smarts--an upgrade from bug smarts, which is what they have now. Or had.” Yes, he admits it, he feels a little sorry about the tiny machines left behind in the cold, barren waste.

“Hmm. I guess they’d be under JARVIS’s direct control when they weren’t under yours. I’m not sold; I want to see the logic trees.” Tony finds Pepper irresistible when she’s being a hard-ass, and also when she’s asleep and when she’s brushing her teeth and when she’s wandering around the penthouse in her Wharton track shorts and flip flops. She’s so all-around great that Tony’s kind of amazed she’s still here. When she was CEO she had to worry about him getting himself killed because it would decrease shareholder value; now she has to worry about it because (presumably) it would make her sad. He’s not sure if it’s an improvement.

“I can make that happen,” he says. “I’ll have my people contact your people.” He gives her a little poke in the ribs. “Hey, can you ask the nurse if they’re done processing the paperwork?” Today’s the day he’s getting sprung, and he doesn’t want to be in here a second longer than he has to.

When, after a couple of hours of teeth-grinding red tape, Pepper finally wheels Tony’s chair into the hallway, he feels like launching into a song like Snow White: _Good morning, trashcan! Good morning, elevator! Good morning, guy who doesn’t understand why his cell phone doesn’t work 100 meters underground!_

His giddiness is muted when Pepper doesn’t wheel him right out to the curb and into the plush Valcona leather embrace of his Audi A8. Instead, he finds himself in another grim military antechamber, surrounded by _Access Restricted, Alarm System in Use_ signs. 

“Why are we here?” Tony asks. “You trying to prove to me that there really _is_ somewhere more boring than my room in this miserable base?”

“You said you wanted to see Bruce first. Before we went home.”

Tony feels a stab of guilt. Yes, he _had_ said that, had thought it often enough, in between nagging his teammates who dropped by for a visit: _Go make sure they’re not doing anything horrible to Bruce. See if he needs anything._. The thing is, between Bruce’s affable exterior, complex inner life, and very low standards for acceptable human behavior toward him, Tony didn’t trust their opinions. He got lots of _He’s fine, he has lots to read, he’s says he’s having fun with the psychological tests_ , and he’d thought _bullshit_ , because he knows the Catch-22: lock a guy up for being angry, patronize and manipulate the shit out of him while expecting him to say _please_ and _thank you_ , and then when he inevitably cracks under the futility of it all, use it as justification to keep him in longer. It would drive an ordinary person to madness, and Bruce isn’t an ordinary person.

So it would make Tony a pretty miserable friend if he said _Screw all that, take me back to my penthouse right now_. But that’s exactly what he wants to tell Pepper. The sense of elation is wearing off, replaced by a hint of nausea and a cowardly nostalgia for how much easier it was to stay in bed and not think about anything more complicated than what channel to watch.

He doesn’t admit any of that, of course, and after another couple of minutes, a SHIELD operative arrives in one of those LSVs that Tony persists in calling a golf cart because he knows it pisses Fury off. Pepper helps him into the rear-facing passenger seat, from which he gathers that he’s officially discharged from the hospital.

“You’re not coming along?” he says when she makes no move to get in.

“Not invited. And it’s probably better if you go alone.” She leans down to give him a brief kiss and he smells vetyver soap, a scent of home. “Call me when you’re finished; the car’s waiting outside.” He feels like a kid being put on a miniature train ride, and as the little vehicle putters away, he half expects her to wave.

The SHIELD base is vast, a combination of high-tech playland and Dante’s Inferno that even Tony’s twin personas don’t have full access to. He’s heard plenty of rumors, of alien spacecraft and teleportation and supervillains sealed into impregnable cells, and when he expresses skepticism, Steve just gives him the _There are some things civilians are better off not knowing_ look. To his surprise, though, the party bus is not going down into the villain-laden bowels of the base, but up.

The operative gives him a _yes-sir_ kissoff at an unmarked door, and it opens to reveal a tall woman with dark, chin-length, hair, wearing a polo shirt and khaki pants.

“Mr. Stark,” she says warmly, extending a hand. “I’m Camila Medina. It’s a real treat to meet you. Please come in and sit down--I understand you’re still recuperating.”

“Nice to meet you, too. Are you Bruce’s doctor?”

“Not exactly. Although I am a doctor.” He’s not sure if he likes the way she smiles at that, but he lets her put a hand under his elbow and escort him through a second security door. He takes the proffered chair and sits. The room is like an arena skybox, quiet darkness on one side and a wall of windows and monitors on the other. 

What the room is overlooking makes Tony’s jaw drop: a huge geodesic dome with transparent panels, housed inside one of the base’s upsweeping, glass-sheathed towers so that it’s well-protected but flooded with daylight. At one end is a screened-off workspace with a desk and a sofa and a cot, but the rest is taken up with what looks like a playset for King Kong. There are giant rings suspended from the superstructure, piles of lumber and whole trees, a surreal toybox of cars and furniture, nonsensical for a human but perfect for an animal. An animal that likes to _smash_.

It’s then that Tony spots Bruce, sitting at the desk in the human end of the enclosure. His hair’s a little longer than the last time Tony saw him, and he’s wearing a military-issue sweatshirt, but otherwise seems perfectly fine, oblivious to his surroundings. He’s typing on a laptop with the lightning speed that never fails to impress Tony, who’s an inveterate hunter-and-pecker. It all looks perfectly normal except for the fact that _Bruce is in a fucking zoo_ , locked up the way Fury promised he never would be when he brought him in, and this is so much worse than anything Tony could have imagined.

When he’s able to take a breath again he turns back to Dr. Medina with every intention of throwing her through the skybox windows and into the gorilla enclosure and asking her how she likes it. It must show in his eyes, because she takes a step back. Tony grabs the back of a chair, not because he’s planning to throw it at her, but because he’s suddenly feeling a little wobbly. The wave passes; not the anger, but the feeling the he’s either going to throw up or defenestrate someone or maybe both at the same time (now _that_ would be a hell of a superpower).

“I assure you,” she begins, with a testifying-before-Congress smile, “Dr. Banner is being treated with the utmost respect and consideration. We’ve designed an entirely new--”

“Great! Good for you. You know what? I don’t care. I’m taking him home right now.”

“Mr. Stark, you--” the smile falters a little. “You’re not authorized. No one is; we have a general order not to release Dr. Banner under any circumstances, even to General Fury. But if you’ll let me explain--”

“No explanation necessary,” he says, giving her the ol’ professional smile right back. “I’m the one with the atomic suit and the superpowers. Okay, the suit may be kind of broken right now, but I have _friends_ with superpowers. And none of them are going to stand for--” It’s then he remember that they’ve all been here to visit. Have all seen this _travesty_ , and not done anything about it. His shit list gets much longer.

“I’ll take you to visit him,” Dr. Medina says, making a sound decision not to try explaining any more.

Because just opening the door to the tank and letting Tony walk in would be too easy, they show him into an antechamber and then make Bruce go through an airlock to reach an identical chamber separated from Tony’s by a clear, solid wall with chairs on either side. 

Tony’s first feeling is genuine pleasure at seeing Bruce again. Whatever else happens, he _likes_ the guy in an uncomplicated way that he hasn’t felt about any other human since he was a kid. 

His second feeling is awkwardness as he realizes that he has no idea what he’s going to say. There’s a simple question-- _Why?_ \--but he’d imagined that conversation taking place in his living room over a couple of drinks, not with Bruce penned up like a serial killer and Tony on the good-person side of the fence. 

It takes Bruce a minute to sit down because he has to rearrange a satchel-like thing bristling with wires and tubes that he wears around his waist. That lets Tony get a good look at him. He’s lost weight; his cheekbones are more prominent and there are shadows under his eyes. The effect this has on Tony is transmuted into a long, awkward pause during which the only things that pop into his head are wise-ass and unsuited to the occasion. 

Finally, Bruce settles himself in his chair and folds his hands in his lap like a model prisoner.

“How are you?” he asks. 

Tony will never think of that as an ordinary pleasantry again.

Bruce waits for his answer with that affable calm that impresses or maddens Tony depending on the day. He’s never quite believed in it--sometimes he catches Bruce’s hands trembling, or a twitch at the corner of his mouth--but he respects the effort that goes into it. 

“Good as new,” Tony says. “Except for the parts that are old.” 

Bruce does that little squint-and-smile thing and seems to relax a fraction. It’s how he is--always diffident, like a traveller in a foreign country--but it’s the context that makes Tony a little nuts.

“Well, shit,” he says, punching the arm of his chair. “Am I the only one who finds this awkward as hell? This place--it’s like they think you’re a combination of Hannibal Lecter and Godzilla. _You_. You play with Pepper’s nieces. You get extra packets of hot sauce from that mean checkout lady at the canteen. You--”

“ _I’m_ not the one who’s the problem,” Bruce says. “Remember?”

“Nope,” Tony says, indignation seguing into annoyance. “I’d completely forgotten that you can transform into a nine-foot-tall man-beast that destroyed my suit and broke twelve of my bones.”

Well. That certainly hadn’t been the direction Tony had intended to go, but it’s too late now. Bruce winces and Tony can almost see what’s going on inside his head, because Bruce’s self-blame routine is as predictable as the sunrise. 

“Sorry,” Tony says gruffly, “I’m just trying to understand. I know we have a difference of opinion on how much of the Hulk is you, but _somebody_ forgot that we’re playing for the same team. I want to know what that was about, and then I want you to make me not worried about it so I can bust you out of this joint.”

“Believe me, Tony, I wish I could. Thinking about what I--what he--did to you, it makes me--” There’s a quaver in Bruce’s voice that makes Tony feel like the worst person in the world, but he can’t pull back, because he realizes now that if he can’t explain it, he and Bruce will never be able to be teammates again. Maybe not even friends. 

“You okay?” Bruce asks. He hunches forward, as close as he can get to the barrier between them, studying Tony’s face like the doctor he used to be. “You went kind of pale for a minute. I know you’re just out of the hospital, maybe you shouldn’t--”

“I’m fine,” Tony says, mouth tight. “Thanks. But don’t change the subject.”

“Okay.” Bruce slumps back in his chair and jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “So. That’s what all this is about. They’re not going to let me back onto the team until they figure out what made me turn on you. They’ve got their top scientists working on it.”

Tony gives a little bark of editorial laughter. “They’re obviously idiots, so I wouldn’t look for any enlightenment in _that_ direction. I’m talking about you. What do _you_ think happened?”

“No idea. I don’t know anything about his thought processes. If he even has them.”

“That’s not the answer I’m looking for,” Tony says. “Try harder.”

“I’m not one of your engineers.” Bruce is trying hard to keep up the wearily amused act. “You can’t order to me to work over the weekend and have an answer on your desk Monday morning. Doesn’t work that way.”

“If you _were_ one of my engineers, I’d fire you.” Tony’s warming to the argument; it helps that he’s genuinely annoyed. “Actually, I’d throw some stuff off my desk for dramatic effect, and then either threaten to fire you or offer you a big bonus. _Something_. Because the motivation’s clearly missing.”

“Believe me, the motivation couldn’t be any better. You think I don’t want to give you the answers you’re looking for? You think I don’t go to sleep every night hearing your bones crack, seeing your blood on the snow--” He stops short, slumps a little further down in his chair. “It’s just that there are some problems that can’t be solved.” 

“Not even for me?”

Bruce chokes up, and Tony has to look away, because Bruce crying is something that he doesn’t want to see, ever. “I’ve tried for years, ever since it happened. The only thing that’s ever worked is walking away. The Avengers....I thought the risk would be acceptable, the good would outweigh the bad. To use the creature to help humanity was something I--but it was an arrogant mistake on my part. I should have known. It can’t be a force for good, it can’t be a force for anything but itself. Maybe you’ve been right all along. The other guy _is_ me. That’s who I am, a greedy, monstrous--”

“Stop it, just stop it,” Tony spits. “Jesus, is this what you turn into when you’ve got no company but your own thoughts? You’re a _scientist_ , and you’re a good man. We’re all monsters inside our own heads; it’s a bad sign if we’re not. I used to make weapons that killed hundreds of thousands of people and I slept like a baby. When I got back from Afghanistan, I was lucky if I could sleep for 10 minutes at a stretch. A conscience is a hell of a thing, Bruce, and yours is way overdeveloped. But at some point you’ve got to fight your way out of the cave. You’ve got to move past it and start looking for solutions.”

“This _is_ the solution. When I’m in here I’m not hurting anybody. Maybe they’ll figure out a way to use the other guy on a limited basis, without having to interact with the team. It’s not all bad; I’m allowed to work, people visit me, and--”

“You’re not a fucking _zoo animal_.” Tony’s on his feet now, shouting, and he doesn’t care who hears it. “You’re not supposed to be happy because the nice lady throws you peanuts once in a while. Is the Big Guy happy? You tell me that. Does he enjoy his blocks and his jungle gym? Or does he want to tear into something alive every once in a while?” 

There’s a long pause in which Bruce looks as shocked as Tony feels. There’s a pain in his side, like maybe he popped a stitch, and a general reminder from his body that he’s only been upright for a few hours.

Bruce ducks his head, stares at his folded hands. “You should go. You don’t look well. The last thing I want is to make things worse.”

“Yeah, well, things are already pretty fucking bad.” He clears his throat; his ears are ringing from the sound of his own voice. “I’m not asking for much; just give me an idea, a place to get started. You have Internet access, right?” Bruce nods, head still bowed low. “Then you know how to get JARVIS to find me. Any time, day or night.”

He turns and walks out without looking back so that he won’t have to see Bruce getting escorted back through the airlock, or worse, sitting motionless, looking at Tony’s retreating back.

“Before you go, I’d like you to see something,” Dr. Medina says, blocking his way with an iPad and a cup of coffee.

The doc pilots him into another side room and he’s too fried to resist. It’s like half the rooms at HQ--full of visual displays being tended by low-level techs who probably use “I work at SHIELD” to get laid.

“We’re constantly monitoring Dr. Banner’s blood chemistry,” the doctor says, waving at the readouts. “Also his brain activity, cardiac data, and metabolism. We cross-correlate it with environmental conditions, behavior, and diurnal rhythms.”

“Gee, I bet nobody’s thought of doing _that_ before.” 

“Never this extensively. We’re using investigative techniques from a wide range of fields, from behavioral psychology to biophysics. Look at these,” she says, pointing to a set of dark green peaks and valleys. “They’re Dr. Banner’s current levels of dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine.” Tony realizes with a jolt that he’s looking at real-time data--no doubt coming from the wired-up albatross around Bruce’s waist.

“Am I supposed to be seeing this? Isn’t it a HIPAA violation or something?” Tony’s fresh off three weeks of being fed, bled and serially probed, but his doctors were trying to help him, not “help” him. This total loss of privacy--being kept in a glass cage and having his precious bodily fluids monitored 24/7--is exactly what Natasha had promised Bruce would _not_ happen when they brought him in. It’s also his deepest fear. Tony knows because Bruce told him, along with with a lot of other personal stuff Dr. Medina would probably give her next three years of grant funding to hear. He decides to start hating her again. 

“Dr. Banner has submitted voluntarily for testing, but if he hadn’t--”

“I’m sure somebody with a gun would have asked nicely.” Tony jabs a finger at the screen. “Can we move this along? I have an appointment with somebody who isn’t you.”

“Of course. These chemicals are hormones, which--”

“I know what hormones do. I get medical stuff.” 

She frowns at him over her glasses. “Which also function as neurotransmitters in the brain. They’re associated with the fight-or-flight response. With fear, anxiety--and anger.”

“And let me guess--Bruce pumps out more of them just before he turns into the Hulk. Wow! You should schedule a press conference immediately.”

“Mr. Stark, I’m trying to show you something important, will you please _shut up_!” That does, in fact, get Tony to shut up, and the technicians to swivel their eyes toward their boss with surprise and maybe some added respect. 

“Sorry, doc. I get sarcastic when I’m exhausted. Please go on.”

“Thank you. I’ll be brief. These are Dr. Banner’s baseline readings--more or less average. Now look at these.” At her gesture, the tech pulls up another set of readings. “Much higher across the board, with an interesting spike in cortisol levels, which are usually associated with physical threat. These results are reproducible, and substantially different than what we see associated with transformation episodes.”

“Huh.” Tony grudgingly admits (if only to himself) that Dr. Medina’s observations don’t seem to be based entirely on crap. “Why did you want me to see this?”

“Because these readings were taken 15 minutes ago, when you were visiting with Dr. Banner.”

“And the other times you’ve seen this?” Tony braces, as if he were about to hear the punchline of an unfunny joke.

“When we’ve shown Dr. Banner video of you.”

“Of Iron Man, you mean?”

“No, Mr. Stark. Of you.” Tony appreciates her sympathetic tone, not to mention the hand under his arm as the room goes a little fuzzy. “I’m sorry, I can see I’ve kept you too long. But I thought this was important for your safety. In case you had any--ideas about removing him from the facility.”

Tony thinks it’s nice of the doc to be concerned about saving his life when he’s been kind of a jerk to her. If he weren’t feeling so dizzy, he might even admit he’d been thinking about ways to bust Bruce out, even up to a few minutes ago.

Not any more. Tony catches his breath, shakes hands with the doctor, and closes the door with relief, leaving the blinking green numbers and Bruce Banner behind.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony gets his leather-upholstered ride home, his glass of Balloch 1946, Pepper curled up next to him in front of a blazing fire (it’s a mild April evening, but he cranks up the AC). 

The scotch tastes like ashes in his mouth. Well, not really--it tastes like butterscotch and warm spices with the pronounced peatiness characteristic of the war years. But Tony is deflated and unsettled and oddly _hurt_. None of which he mentions to Pepper, because she went to so much trouble _not_ going to any trouble, to make this a normal night, which is what Tony has been craving since the evac helicopter touched down in Buenos Aires a month ago.

They eat Thai takeout and ice cream right out of cartons and flip through 2000 TV channels on three different screens, Pepper mostly indulging him TV-wise except when he lingers too long on motor sports or sadistic game shows. His weary bones are sunk deep into the sofa, Pepper’s legs are draped across his lap, and there’s nothing wrong with the world except for the feeling of disappointment that sits in him like a rock, untouched by the warmth of alcohol.

After a while, Pepper leans forward and runs a hand through his hair. “You’re wiped out. Let’s go to bed.” 

“Sure,” Tony says letting her pull him to his feet. “But no sex, okay? I really am tired and ever since they took the catheter out--” He can only get that far before cracking up at the look of disappointment, sweetly masked by sympathy, on Pepper’s face. “I’m lying. I’m tired, not dead. Let’s do it.”

Her smile reappears and she slides an arm around his waist, but she guides him to the storage room instead of the bedroom. 

“I got you a welcome-home present,” she says, pointing to a plastic-sheathed cylinder with an international courier slip on the lid. Tony’s heart skips a beat.

“Is it a puppy?”

Pepper gives him a not-very-gentle shove toward the package and waits, smiling, while he pops the lid. Inside is a powder the color of pencil lead, not exactly exciting, but Tony knows better. He plunges a hand into it and it shrinks away to a precise distance from his skin, leaving not so much as a speck on him. The little machines are apparently on their factory setting of _repel_. He imagines programming them, teaching them, making them part of his skin--

“How did you do this?” he whispers. “I thought it was going to take at least another week.”

“What can I say? I have friends in New Songdo Research District.”

It may be the hottest thing he’s ever heard come out of her mouth. He follows her into the bedroom, pushing her along with a little _hurry up_ gesture that happens to involve his hands on her rear end. In the elation of having her, in his bed and his arms and as close to his body as any body could be, in the anticipation of starting work with the sunrise, he forgets, for a while, that anything else is wrong. 

+++++

When he wakes up he can tell from the way he feels that it’s well before morning. He doesn’t torture himself or Pepper by rolling and sighing and trying to force himself back to sleep. Instead, he slips out of bed and into the living room, still dim in the grey pre-dawn, too early know whether it’s going to be a sunny day or not.

He could go to the lab, but he doesn’t. He’s not superstitious, but he doesn’t want to start the Mark VIII in his current mood. The fog of disappointment has rolled in again, and the dark shape he can discern in it isn’t the Hulk; it’s Bruce.

He realizes now that he’d gone to Bruce looking for explanations that Bruce, swaddled in layers of guilt, philosophy and dubious science, hadn’t been able to provide. But Bruce’s unwillingness to peek out long enough to see that Tony had problems of his own, that his need for information was more than just some pigheaded reductionist bullshit--that had _hurt_ , because it didn’t take a philosopher or a mystic to give Tony what he needed, it just took a friend. And that’s what Tony had thought Bruce was--a depressed and confused friend, maybe--until Dr. Medina and her wavy lines had made Tony think that maybe the feeling wasn’t mutual.

Bruce had sat on this very sofa so many times, talking or eating or watching a game. It was fun having him in the same building; sometimes they even took him along to Malibu, although Bruce was at the point where he could afford his own weekend place (he refused to be put on the payroll at Stark Industries, so Tony paid him what he considered a fair contracting rate for his services, which by normal standards was a pretty fucking huge amount of money). Pepper adored Bruce; there’d been a brief period where Tony thought she maybe even liked him too much, susceptibility to the Banner charm being pretty much universal. 

He’d seen slivers of the darkness Bruce always insisted was inside him. Bruce tried so hard to be normal, but when it was just the two of them talking and Bruce let his guard down, things slipped through--hints of childhood abuse, night trains, small town jails, waking up naked and alone after a Hulk episode and having to start over again quite literally from nothing. It was enough to make a devil out of a saint, and Bruce had never claimed to be one of those. Tony had everything in the world--fame, wealth, brains, a woman who loved to make him happy, and most of all, the ability to step in and out of his other identity like the suit of clothes that it was. If Bruce resented him for all that, Tony could hardly blame him. Knowing Bruce, he’d feel guilty for having a normal, ungenerous human emotion, so it would go onto the coal heap with everything else, all the resentment and anger that fueled the Hulk the way vibranium fueled Iron Man. 

Tony could talk himself into forgiving Bruce, but not into believing it didn’t matter. More than just a collegial friendship had broken. There was trust, more fragile even than his life. 

+++++

“Adaptable, multi-purpose nanites--incredible,” Rhodey says, zooming in on the 3D rendering. “Forget Iron Man--I mean, not forget him, but the military applications are staggering. Just think--”

“Whoa there, cowboy,” Tony says. “This is unfuckingbelievably proprietary technology developed under contract for Stark Industries. You’re here as a private citizen. That’s why I told you to leave the bus driver uniform at home.”

Rhodey is, in fact, wearing a plaid shirt and jeans, an outfit in which he can drink a beer without fear of bringing disgrace to the Air Force. Tony’s invited him to New York to get his input on the Mark VIII, but it’s also nice just to hang out. It’s been too long.

“Let’s get to the point, Stark,” Rhodey says, pointing the neck of the beer at him. “Am I going to get to test pilot this thing?”

Tony lets him sweat it for a minute, Rhodey’s poker face betrayed by the gleam in his eyes. It’s validation; if he can impress Rhodey, he knows he’s on the right track.

“Ah, what the hell. Get us some court time at the Mojave range, bring a twelve pack, and you’re on.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Rhodey says, giving Tony a thump on the shoulder. “Of course, if you’d rather make it Malibu, we could test the hydro pack.”

“Don’t push your luck. Anyhow, next time you come to Malibu, I’m bringing Pepper and you’re bringing Glenda and we’re doing things like civilized people.”

“Listen to you--it’s like you’ve decided to join the human race.” Rhodey pops the cap off another Bud. “In all seriousness, this new suit can’t be ready too soon.”

“Are the bad guys misbehaving again?”

“You better believe it. We’ve got unconfirmed reports that the Abominable Snowman you fought down south may not be the only mutant creature out there. Suddenly every bad guy seems to have one or be in the market for one. Some of our analysts say that it’s Chinese genetic engineering, others that it’s alien tech. Of course that’s what everybody says these days when they see something they can’t explain. The world was a lot easier when it was just guns and bombs.”

“I like variety. Variety’s good for business.”

“So you say,” Rhodey says with a chuckle. “You just like an excuse to suit up and get out there.”

“I know you are, but what am I?” Tony says, but something in his voice makes Rhodey put the bottle down and look at him with something more than speed-freak comradeship.

“You really okay with getting back on the horse?” Rhodey asks. “You took some serious damage from that snowman, and from the Hulk.”

“Yeah, I got spread around a little,” Tony says lightly, tapping the shoulder plate of the suit so that it makes a metallic _ping_. “Hence the anti-ablation features.”

“Uh huh. I heard that Banner is in custody, that they’ve got him locked up in some super cell deep in the bowels of HQ. That okay with you, too?”

“No, not really.” The feeling in the pit of his stomach, absent since Rhodey arrived, makes a surprise reappearance. “But it’s complicated.”

“I see.” Rhodey leans back, props his feet up on Tony’s drafting table. “Complicated like Dr. Davis’s nanomaterials class, or complicated like Tony Stark doesn’t tell anyone he’s dying and plans to go out in a blaze of booze and girls?”

Tony, smiles, just a little. “Somewhere in between.” 

“You talked to anyone about it?”

“No, I’d rather Pepper--wait, do you mean like a therapist?” Tony’s insides shrink at the thought. “God, no. I’d rather shave my head.”

“Okay, okay. I’d like to see that, but never mind. But if you want another perspective--don’t take this personally, but you don’t have a lot of experience with the fog of war, unless it’s on the visor of your suit.”

“Hey,” Tony says, genuinely affronted. “The Avengers aren’t about spandex and cool explosions and magazine covers. I mean, not _only_. I know you know that.”

“I’m not suggesting that they are,” Rhodey says. “I just think you’re in a tough position. Most guys only come home once a year. You put on the spandex--excuse me, the armor--and go into the field and you’re back in boardroom by Monday morning. Not much processing time.”

“If you’re suggesting I’ve got some kind of superhero schizophrenia--” Tony begins, voice rising, because Rhodey’s got a lot of nerve lecturing him about job stress.

“I’m just suggesting you need time,” Rhodey says, holding up a placating hand. “Not just the 20 hours a day you spend working on these gizmos. The shit that happens in the heat of battle--most of it you don’t even begin to process until you get home. It’s nature’s way of keeping your sorry ass alive, I guess, but it means you’ve got hard work to do, just when you’d rather be kissing your wife and mowing your lawn. Figuratively speaking, in your case.”

“So you’re saying I’m _avoiding_ it?” Tony looks at the clasped hands in his lap instead of at Rhodey, feeling sullen.

Rhodey shrugs. “It’s your brain, not mine. I’m just asking whether there’s ever a moment when you’re working and you look at the tool in your hand and suddenly it’s like you’re--I don’t know, looking down the throat of a hungry monster.”

It’s so exactly like what’s been happening to Tony for the past three weeks that he catches his breath, then catches himself catching it--too late for Rhodey’s keen eyes.

“Thought so,” Rhodey says quietly. “And you may think you can put it off forever, but you can’t. You tell me, who’s paying the price for that?”

“Shit,” Tony says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. 

“So?” Rhodey says, gesturing _come on, give_ with his hand. “This is not an invitation to cry on my shoulder. If I think you fucked up operationally, I’m going to tell you.” The unspoken _if not_ is that Tony might be able to purge himself of the queasy guilt that hits every time the elevator dings past Bruce’s floor.

“Okay,” Tony says. “God, no wonder you’re such a pigheaded asshole in contract negotiations. You want it, here’s the short version.” Tony takes a deep breath. “Nobody’s ever been able to figure out how much of Bruce’s memories or personality the Hulk retains. It seems like he keeps more when he transforms on purpose instead of when he’s really angry, but it’s not predictable. So the rest of us stay out of his way until we have a feel for how he’s going to be that day. He does well with direct, simple orders if they’re coming from someone he trusts, but you never know who he’s going to decide to trust.” 

“And that day it wasn’t you?”

“No, it was not. The Hulk engaged with the creature, but it turned out it was booby-trapped. So I tried to call him off, but it’s like trying to stop an earthquake. He picked me up and--” Tony stops, overcome not by the memory of pain, but how _strange_ it felt to be picked up so easily by another being, how helpless. “He used me on the creature like a baseball bat. Sounds kind of funny, right?”

“Not a bit.” Rhodey’s not smiling or frowning, just listening. Tony knows his own story probably isn’t the worst Rhodey’s heard, even this month.

“For the Hulk it was pretty smart, killing two birds with one stone like that.” A lot of what happened down there is blurry, like the snow-flecked air, but Tony remembers feeling impressed, maybe even a little proud of the Hulk, feeling no pain, not even any pressure, thanks to the anti-inertial field. 

“Do you think he realized what he was doing? That you could get hurt?”

“I have no idea.” Tony’s voice is sounding a little scratchier than he intends; he hasn’t consciously thought about it in weeks, the work neatly displacing the reason for it. “Bruce doesn’t think the Hulk can store memories of his own, so everything in the Hulk’s brain is in Bruce’s. Whether he can access it is another question.” 

“But it’s possible,” Rhodey continues, relentless. “He wasn’t necessarily trying to hurt you, or even disregarding your safety. He could have thought he was being smart, like you said. Or he might not have been thinking at all. Those kind of questions--if Banner doesn’t know the answers, I sure don’t. And I don’t think they matter. Just tell me this one thing.” Rhodey waits until Tony stops fidgeting with a pair of calipers and meets his eyes. “Were you afraid for your life?”

“Yeah,” Tony says with a cough. “Yeah, I was.” He can feel his eyes tear and he’s mad, because he hates pulling that kind of shit in front of Rhodey, but Rhodey just leans over and pats his knee, which feels warm and good through the denim. He’s living in that moment, he’s afraid, but he’s not too afraid to avoid thinking about it any more: the moment he thought he was going to die, in a confusion of blood and bellowing, at the hands of his friend.

“But you didn’t,” Rhodey says, and adds, a little more softly, “Do you ever wish you had?”

“No, no, nothing like that.” If anything, Tony has been at a near-manic level of happiness, dating from the moment he decided, consciously or not, to shut the door on Bruce and his complexities. “I just--I don’t know about going back out there. With him. The Hulk, I mean.”

“That’s not too likely, is it? Not with Banner locked up.”

“Bruce said SHIELD was trying to figure out a way to use him on a limited basis,” imagining as he says it what that euphemism probably involves.

Rhodey’s eyes narrow. “And you trust them to do what’s best for him?

“Fuck, no.” 

“Well, then. We have a saying in the Air Force: we never leave a man behind.” 

One of the things Tony loves about Rhodey is that he can say things that John Wayne would find corny and sound completely sincere. “Don’t the Marines say that?”

Rhodey shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter; we all live it. And right now you’ve got a man down in the field. What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” Tony says, his least favorite words ever to say. 

Rhodey rises and gives Tony a little pat on the shoulder. As he turns to toss his empty in the trash can, Tony can see that the son of a bitch is smiling.

+++++

Tony has no idea where in the world Natasha is, but he hopes it’s somewhere where she can answer her phone. After a few foreign-sounding rings, she picks up.

”Tony? What’s up?” Tony can hear cars honking and the rush of traffic in the background.

“Hi. Can you talk for a minute? Is this connection secure? I mean from the people who sign our checks.”

He can practically hear her eyeroll. “Yes. And the KGB, AIM, Mossad--”

“Okay, okay. Anyway. I need your helping breaking into the enclosure where they’re keeping Bruce.”

“Finally! I was ready to do it weeks ago, but Steve said we should wait for the go from you, since you know Bruce the best. You’ve talked to him, right? He’s on board with this?”

“Yeah, well--” Tony’s too embarrassed to admit that he hasn’t talked to Bruce in more than a week. “We’re not breaking him out,” Tony says, trying to sound reasonable. “I need to break in. I need to talk to him.”

Natasha gives a huff of disbelief. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just to walk in the front door during visiting hours?”

“This is important, trust me. I need to talk to him alone. That place is monitored up, down and sideways. And it can’t look like we did it.”

”You’re a demanding customer. Anything else?”

“Don’t hurt anyone. He’ll be mad if we hurt anyone.”

“Well, I certainly don’t want to make him mad.” Tony can hear what sounds like bursts of automatic weapons fire. ”Hey, listen, I’ve got to go,” she says with no particular urgency. ”Meet me tomorrow night at midnight at the loading dock across from the officers’ parking lot. No Iron Man stuff, okay? Wear dark clothes and running shoes. Don’t drive your own car and don’t badge in. You copy that?”

“Yeah, got it. Good luck with--whatever that is,” Tony says, but she’s already clicked off.

+++++

At midnight, he gets one of his employees with a base pass to sneak him in using the high-tech expedient of hiding in the back seat. 

Natasha melts out of the shadows of the loading dock, noiseless and nearly invisible except for her red hair, which Tony has always figured was a _fuck you_ of the _if you can see this, it’s too late_ variety.

“Seriously?” she says instead of “hello,” pointing at his vintage _Dark Side of the Moon_ T-shirt.

“You _said_ black, it’s _black_. Plus if we get caught I want to look cool in the booking photo.”

Her lips are uncompressible into a thin line, but she tries. “If they catch us, we’re not going to Rikers. Follow me.”

“Gladly.”

This late, all the bureaucrats and researchers have gone home, and the halls are empty except for guards and the occasional analyst stepping away from the a _situation_ long enough for a smoke or a microwave burrito. Natasha makes sure nobody sees them by staying out of everyone’s way, which is a lot harder to do than you would think, especially when Tony forgets to look where he’s walking and kicks a janitor’s bucket halfway down the hall.

They make it to the double doors of the Department of Hulk and Tony is about to ask what the strategy is when Natasha makes his stomach drop into his shorts by _ringing the fucking doorbell_. A few seconds later the door budges open and Natasha waves Tony frantically to the side. A sleepy-looking technician pops his head out.

“Hey, I already told the cleaning crew--” he begins, at which point Natasha’s manicured hand reaches around the door frame and hits him with a puff of something from a little bottle that drops the guy to the floor. 

“ _Ring the doorbell and hide?_ ” Tony hisses. “That’s a grade school move.”

“Works,” Natasha says, pulling the guy inside and shutting the door. In moments she’s skinned him, taking his badge and jacket and rolling him under a conference table.

Tony likes guns and rockets and blasting his stereo on the open road, not this pin-dropping stealth that seems to be as well tailored to Natasha as her jumpsuit. As they make their way through the dim laboratory, Tony can feel his nerves waking up one by one, the marching ants making their way up his spine.

Natasha slowly opens the door onto the observation deck, looking enough like the ingenue in a horror movie that Tony braces for something to jump out at them. 

Instead, a couple of dark shapes fly by his ear with a vibrating _whizz _toward the dark recesses of the ceiling. Tony begins to yelp but is stopped by Natasha pinching his arm, hard.__

“ _Ow,_ ” Tony hisses. There’s a tinkle of something breakable hitting the floor. “Jesus _Christ_. You didn’t tell me you were bringing Clint. How is _that_ covering our tracks?”

“He’s using arrows we confiscated from HYDRA, and he just took out the cameras. He’s also deactivated the monitoring systems from the control room.”

“Oh. Okay. Uh, thanks, I guess.”

They make their way down the metal stairs in twilit gloom to the base of the domed enclosure. Tony can just make out the living section, a lumpy shape that might be Bruce asleep.

Natasha waves the access card against the door reader and gets a red light for her trouble.

“Shit,” she says, perfect brows knitting together. “I can fix this, but it’s going to take a few minutes. Stay here.”

Tony does, and Natasha disappears, soundless, into the gloom. He bounces on the balls of his feet in nervous expectation of a siren going off or a gun barrel pointed at his temple. As the minutes stretch on he just has to _move_ , so he edges a little closer to Bruce. 

He remembers the layout from his daytime visit: furniture grouped as if in a small apartment, but artificial and completely exposed, like the diorama in a natural history museum. The lump in the bed does indeed turn out to be Bruce, asleep under a paisley quilt that’s probably supposed to look homey but is like nothing that Bruce (who shares Tony’s love of clean modernism) would ever buy. 

Bruce is lying on his back, an arm flung above his head, face impossible to make out in the darkness. Tony can’t imagine having a restful sleep in those circumstances, but Bruce has plenty of practice adapting to his surroundings, sleeping in ditches and waking up naked and disoriented, not sure if he’d killed someone or left a smoking crater behind.

On a team that includes gods and monsters, a guy who wakes up with no memory and no pants is easy to take in stride. Picking up Bruce had become part of the mission plan, aided by a tiny, implantable transponder of Tony’s design. If they were near civilization, Fury sent someone after Bruce, but if not, either Tony or Thor picked up him up, often literally. Bruce wasn’t crazy about transport by superhero, but he was always a good sport about it, including the time that Thor had covered Bruce with his cloak and carried him in his arms like the stud on the cover of a romance novel. Tony hadn’t ribbed him about it because--although on one level the image was funny as hell--on another it was just another one of the little humiliations that came with being not in any kind of fucking control of yourself. 

Whatever _Vanity Fair_ had said, Tony doesn’t drop-kick puppies and he doesn’t like hurting Bruce or seeing him get hurt, which makes Tony wonder afresh how he could have left him for almost a month in this hellhole that smells like fear and disinfectant.

“Here we go,” Natasha says in his ear, and Tony almost has a nuclear-assisted coronary. “I had to get it from that doctor.”

“Was it the unconscious kind of ‘get’?” Tony asks, but Natasha’s already swiping the new card. The light turns green and there’s a satisfying _click_ and Natasha flashes a thumbs-up to someone unseen in the darkness.

They enter on the playpen side and have to pick their way around metal debris. It’s got the _quiet-too-quiet_ feeling of entering a lion’s enclosure while the big cat dozes and dreams of lapping up your blood. 

Natasha pulls aside the sad excuse for a privacy curtain to reveal Bruce’s sad excuse for a bedroom. In this moment all the metaphysical bullshit about the nature of self is reduced to two voices in Tony’s head: _It’s just Bruce_ and _No, it’s not_. He freezes, scared to make a sound, conscious that a month ago he would have thrown a pillow at Bruce’s head without a second thought.

“I’ll wake him up,” Natasha says. “It’ll be better that way, trust me.” Tony nods, aware that there’s no such thing as a safe distance anyway.

Natasha is soundless, floating above Bruce like a black moth. She leans down and presses her lips--the lips Tony stares at so often while she speaks, without even meaning to--against Bruce’s. It’s so beautiful that Tony forgets to worry that Bruce will be startled awake and transform into something that isn’t a frog or a prince. Tony can see Bruce’s body tense as he wakes, then relax again, not reaching up to touch the lovely phantom’s hair because you don’t bother to do that to a vision.

Natasha pulls away and Bruce falls back against the pillow, lips still parted, eyes unfocused.

“Hi, Bruce,” Natasha says, a hand still resting on his shoulder. “Sorry about that. It works better than an arm across the windpipe. Especially in your case.”

“It’s-it’s fine,” Bruce says hoarsely, reaching out a hand to fumble at his night stand. Natasha hands him first his glasses, then a plastic cup of water. “What’s up? I hope this isn’t a rescue mission.”

“Nope. Someone wants to talk to you,” she says, and waves Tony through the curtain.

Bruce blinks at him for a moment. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to come during visiting hours?”

Before Tony can answer, there’s something he has to check. He grabs the edge of Bruce’s blanket and throws it off, so that he can see Bruce is wearing institutional pajamas but nothing with wires or tubes.

“Hey,” Bruce says, grabbing the covers back. It’s ordinary annoyance, not the arcing stress that points in the Hulk’s direction, but it still tweaks Tony’s nerves, which are already on high alert. The air feels thick, as if it’s full of gas that’s about to ignite.

“Do you mind if I wait outside?” Natasha says, apparently aware of the vibe.

“Good idea,” Tony says. “I hope you brought a book.” She wastes no time slipping away.

“You do realize coming here was a stupid idea,” Bruce says, throwing back the covers again and swinging his legs around so he’s sitting on the edge of the bed. “And incredibly dangerous.”

With his glasses on and the ghost of a wry smile on his lips, Bruce looks more like himself. Tony wonders how long that’s going to last.

“I agree that it’s stupid for _one_ of us to be in here,” Tony says.

“Are you going to start that again?” Bruce runs a hand over his face. “I appreciate the sentiment, I really do, but--”

“ _Sentiment_? You think I’m here because I feel sorry for you? Fuck, no. I’m disappointed. I’m _mad_.” He edges closer, a little more in Bruce’s space. “Your life wasn’t easy enough before, living in a multi-million dollar condo, working in your private lab by day and saving the world by--other days? That was such a huge burden that you had to find somewhere where they tell you when to wake up and when to shave and when you can eat a bowl of fucking cereal?”

“In case you’ve forgotten, I didn’t have a choice.” Even in the dim light, Tony can see Bruce’s jaw clenching. “I’m sorry about the apartment, if that’s what you’re mad about. You can rent it out now, I won’t be needing--”

“You’re so right. _That’s_ what I’m mad about.” Tony crosses his arms and raises his voice, hoping that Natasha and Clint have all the nosy little techs and microphones locked up tight. “I’m number 5 on the _Forbes 400_ , and I’m worried that one of my tenants isn’t making rent payments. Or it could possibly be that I’m worried that one of my top researchers is pissing his life away as the five-star attraction on SHIELD’s Safari Adventure.”

“I already explained to you,” Bruce says, the stress creeping further into his voice even as Tony watches him do the deep-breathing Zen thing. “I did what I could, but there’s a time to stop fighting, and that’s when other people get hurt.”

“Of course. It’s always about _other_ people.” Tony’s warming to his subject now, adrenaline up and heart beating double time. “You’re _San Roberto de Alamogordo_ , making sure everybody knows about that big, green cross you bear. Then things get a little bit difficult and you can’t run far enough or fast enough. You leave a trail of destruction, buddy, but it’s not all metal and glass.”

“Don’t talk to me about what’s _difficult_.” Bruce is inching closer, barefoot and gray-stubbled, the most dangerous man in pajamas that Tony will ever see. “Everyone thinks they know what they’d do in my position. For some people it’s about revenge, getting back at all the people who’ve hurt them.” Bruce’s hands are shaking now, his pale cheeks beginning to flush. “For others the Hulk is a weapon, a tool. What is he to you, Tony? Something shiny for your collection, something that nobody else has? Is that the real reason you’re mad that I’m in here--because somebody else took your toys?” He jabs a finger toward Tony’s chest, just brushing against his T-shirt, but it feels like a 10KV current direct to his heart. “What am _I_ , Tony? What do you think I am?”

The answer forms in Tony’s mind so clearly that it’s almost on his lips before he can stop it. But he does, and the effort of holding it back joins with the tension of being close enough to Bruce to see how dilated his pupils are. It’s like holding an atomic bomb in your hands, knowing that you’ll be no safer across the room or across the city, but with that extra edge of pure insanity. There’s a moment where Bruce is just waiting, breathing a little hard, Tony wondering what kind of chemical transformations are already going on in his blood. There’s no more chance to run away, so he might as well charge forward.

“You’re the stupidest smart motherfucker I’ve ever met. And you’re my friend.”

A green shadow passes behind Bruce’s eyes, and there’s a moment where Tony thinks Bruce might slug him, which under the circumstances would be deserved. Then Bruce takes a step back and collapses on the bed, shoulders slumped, arms limp between his knees. He looks utterly defeated, but Tony knows he isn’t.

He’s won. They’ve both won.

“Wow,” Tony says, starting to shake a little as the adrenaline tide rolls out. “Guess what didn’t happen.” 

Bruce doesn’t look like he’s going to be moving anytime soon, so Tony decides to give his wobbly knees a break and sits on the bed, not too close to Bruce but not too far away, since there’s nothing to worry about.

“I don’t suppose you have a barf bag and a bottle of GlenDronach?” Tony gets no answer, so pours himself a cup of water from the plastic pitcher. “You know this place is 10 times worse from the inside. I feel like I should donate more money to the Bronx Zoo. Or maybe campaign to shut it down.” He sips his water in silence.

“I’ve given up trying to understand you,” Bruce says after a while. He sounds exhausted, but he also sounds like _Bruce_. The brittle tension is gone.

“Most of what I do makes sense in the context of me being a rich asshole. But in this case, you don’t have all the information.”

“Feel free to share,” Bruce says. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep any time soon.”

“Okay.” Tony tries to collect his scattershot thoughts into some kind of logical sequence. “First of all, if you don’t mind my asking--have you been transforming since they threw you in here? I couldn’t help but notice the debris field.”

“Yes,” Bruce says tightly. “And it’s been getting more frequent. Since you mention it.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Tony says lightly, as if Bruce is complaining about a persistent cough. “There’s something else. You said you kept thinking about--the incident. Blood on the snow, stuff like that.” Bruce shifts uncomfortably, making the bed springs creak. “You don’t usually remember anything that happens, so how did you know about that?”

“I saw enough. When I woke up, they were loading you onto the helicopter. I saw the pieces of your suit, and at first I thought the snow creature did it. Then Fury told me what happened.”

“With his usual compassion and sensitivity, I’m sure.”

Bruce shrugs. “He didn’t blame me, but he didn’t soft pedal it, either. He said you were in critical condition and they were taking you a hospital in Argentina. And that they were going to treat me as a Class A Extraspecies threat until they could complete an investigation.”

“Same classification as Loki. Won’t he be mad.”

“They kept me at an abandoned military base until they could get a secure transport. The logistics must have been complicated.”

Tony imagines Bruce huddled in some rusty Quonset hut with nothing but penguins and self-reproach for company, and understands his rapid unravelling. 

“I’m surprised they didn’t bill you for it, knowing the government,” Tony says. “But what you saw, what you heard--that didn’t come from what Fury told you, unless you have a really vivid imagination.”

“They film everything. There was a surveillance drone, but most of the video they got from your suit.” As well as the more complex integrated video, the suit has a sort of black box recorder. Under the circumstances (the suit and Tony both being in pieces) he understands why SHIELD would have accessed it, but it doesn’t stop him from feeling pissed. It’s _his_ suit, and his experiences. 

“And they showed it to you--the first-person-shooter view of me getting torn up.” 

Bruce nods glumly, and Tony fantasizes briefly about paying a return visit to HQ in his suit.

“And you’ve been transforming, and they’ve been conducting behavior studies here--” Tony waves his hand toward the control room. “Did they find the needle in the haystack? Did they figure out a trigger, a way to _make_ you transform?”

“Yes,” Bruce says, so softly Tony almost can’t hear him.

“And--” The words stick in Tony’s throat even though he’s pretty sure he knows the answer, because there’s a horrible and inexorable logic to it. “Bruce, is the way they trigger you to show you the video of me getting hurt?” 

Bruce doesn’t answer, but slumps forward and puts his face in his hands. Tony feels unbelievably pissed off and _helpless_ , because he can’t go back in time and stop this. Because they’ve been torturing Bruce for weeks, cycling him through agony and rage, to the point where it’s no wonder the poor man can’t think straight.

Tony lays a hand between Bruce’s shoulder blades, a bit cautiously because if Bruce had ever been a touchy kind of guy, he’s learned to keep physical distance. But Tony can feel his muscles relaxing under the cheap flannel, and hears a slow exhale, as if of relief.

“They’re industrial grade sons of bitches, Bruce,” he says. “I’ve been in the files. They call this Project Catalyst, and they’ve been planning it for years. You know how Fury is always saying the Avengers are still controversial, even within SHIELD? A lot of people don’t like the fact that we can’t be controlled. I’m a rich, independent SOB, Thor isn’t on the planet half the time, and you--the best card in the deck, the one that beats all the other cards--you’re the most unpredictable because you’ve got the best moral bullshit detector. Usually, that is.”

“That’s not true,” Bruce says, frowning. “You do this because you know it’s the right thing, and Steve--”

“Steve hasn’t been doing this long enough to realize how easily his government will lie to him. Unlike you, you knucklehead,” Tony says, giving Bruce a nudge with his shoulder. “They’d like to parade you through streets like they used to parade the missiles in Red Square. But they can’t, so they just write long analyses about _Will he or won’t he?_ And now you’re in New York, and you’re working with SHIELD--it’s like having the candy just out of reach. You fucked things up when you learned to control your transformation, so they had to figure out a way to break it back down. We gave them that, and the perfect trigger, at the same time. And you helped quite a bit by holding still for the butterfly net.”

“So that part of it wasn’t just you trying to get me angry,” Bruce says, turning to look at Tony for the first time. “You believe that I stopped fighting because I was consumed by self-pity, and that when I did that, I made the bad guys’ job easier.” He doesn’t sound angry or morose any more; he sounds like he’s trying to figure things out, rationally and without self-regard, which is what Bruce is capable of at his best. 

“I don’t think it was self-pity. I think you were so mad at yourself for what the Hulk did to me that you lost any kind of perspective. Believe me, I get it. You should have seen me for the last month; I had triple-caffeinated energy for anything but thinking about this. I did get a ton of work done on the Mark VIII, though. You’re going to love it. All the bells and whistles, plus it’s Hulk proof.”

“Please don’t say that,” Bruce says with a grimace.

“Oh, I’m going to prove it. Me and Rhodey are going to have a party in the desert, and youre invited, as long as you bring your friend.”

“Sounds like fun,” Bruce says. “Except that you still don’t have your guarantee that the other guy won’t hurt you.”

“Oh, that.” Tony runs his hand over the short hairs at his neck, which are damp and cooling. “It’s fine. It’s not a problem.”

“Because you have a new suit? I got the impression that it’s not about the suit.” Bruce looks away from Tony and down to his clasped hands. “In the video, there’s this moment where you run forward to try to stop him from attacking the creature. The other guy looks at you, and he--” Bruce halts, then proceeds with effort. “He _grins_ , like he’s anticipating how much fun it’s going to be.” 

“And you assumed that his evil grin had to do with taking me apart. This is weird to say, because I know he’s _your_ monster, but I think you’re in danger of stereotyping him. You think he was being hostile to me because you fear the worst, and because they’ve been trying to convince you that he’s too out of control to be left safely in your hands. But look at it this way-- _we_ didn’t know that the creature’s fur would damage the suit, so why would he? And he’d seen me do all kinds of crazy things in that suit without getting hurt before.”

“ _I_ have, you mean.” They’re sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, so Tony can feel Bruce tensing up, but he’s come to far now not to push ahead.

“You’ve said it yourself--you don’t know whether he remembers between visits. So why not give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that at best, the Big Guy was making a mistaken assumption, and that at worst, he just fucked up. We all do it sometimes. Shit, Clint almost took my ear off with one of his arrows.”

“During the mission?” 

“No, about an hour ago.”

Bruce gives a little chuckle that turns into a cough, and Tony hands him his cup of water.

“Thanks.” He takes a gulp and hands it back. “So you’re suggesting that it was just an ordinary mistake, something I could have done just as easily as myself as the other guy.”

“I’m doing a little more than suggesting. I’m saying that unless you, Dr. Genius Physicist from C.I.T., can think of an alternate explanation, you’re going to have to accept mine.”

Bruce steeples his hands the way he does in the lab when he’s thinking. “It’s not going to be easy. Even if I accept it intellectually, they’ve been conditioning me to see it the other way for weeks.”

“I don’t recall you caring much about whether things were easy.”

The corners of Bruce’s mouth twitch. “You’re giving me too much credit. I dug myself quite a hole. When I handed myself over to them willingly--what’s that old folktale about walking over thresholds?”

“You’re thinking of vampires. This doesn’t involve vampires. See? It’s not as bad as it could be.” 

That gets a genuine laugh out of Bruce. It’s no coincidence that Pepper and Bruce, two of Tony’s favorite people, share a propensity to laugh at his jokes.

“It’s bad enough,” Bruce says. “What are my options? I’ve been classified as an enemy of the Earth. If I run again, there’s going to be a planet-wide APB. out on me.”

“Yeah, but you’re not limited to the planet this time.” Tony hesitates, not eager to put this particular option on the table. “Thor knows this place that’s almost all water, where the land is practically all beach--kind of like Baja, without the all-inclusives.”

“It sounds beautiful,” Bruce says. “Did he really offer that? To take me there?”

“He did. Or anywhere else you want to go.”

“The trouble is that where I want to go, he can’t take me,” Bruce says, a little wistful. “I’ve gotten spoiled. The sages are right--giving up desire is the hardest thing.”

“Hey, I’ve told you I’m the wrong guy to be discussing the Eightfold Path with. I personally own 47 TVs, two soccer teams, and an obscene number of cars. But if you tell me what you want, at least you know I won’t judge you.”

Bruce gives a twisted smile and glances around the room, at the metal side table with the pitcher of lukewarm water, the plywood desk, the plastic chair: everything cheap and impermanent, easy to replace. Nothing that belongs to him. It begins to dawn on Tony what it means to leave everything behind, each transformation a death. 

“Go on, tiger,” he says, while he can still speak. “What is it? Your own Caribbean island? Breaking the bank at the Bellagio? Norse goddesses in metal bikinis?” 

Bruce smiles so wide that Tony can see his teeth, and a gleam lights his eyes, as if he’s thinking something monstrous. 

“Oh, come on,” Tony says. “What?”

“I want my old life back,” he says.

“You mean India?” Tony’s not the type to balk at stealing a guy away from charity work, but he tries to hide his disappointment for Bruce’s sake.

“No,” Bruce says. “Living and working in Stark Tower. Saving the world on the weekends.”

Now it’s Tony’s turn to grin. “You’re right,” he says. “It won’t be easy.”

“Is it even possible?” 

“I think so,” Tony says. “A lot of things are going to have to come together for it work and for you--” He gives Bruce’s shoulder a little pat, and is glad when he doesn’t flinch. “That’s going to be the not-easy part. It’s going to mean--” He stops.

“ _What?_ Bruce prompts, impatient now, excited. “How crazy is this crazy idea?”

Tony tells him, and Bruce sobers up considerably.

“Wow,” he says. “You don’t screw around.”

“When I thought of it, I didn’t know for certain about you you and the video. I mean, I made an educated guess, but this--” Tony’s breath catches on the enormity of what he’s asking Bruce to do.

“It’s okay,” Bruce says, watching Tony closely. “I said I wanted all the marbles. You told what I had to do to get them. That’s not on you; it’s on me. Can’t promise anything except that I’ll do my best.”

The curtain sways and Tony is halfway to panic when Natasha appears. “Sorry to interrupt, but the guards change shifts in another half an hour. We should be out of here by then.”

“No problem,” Tony says, adrenal glands pretty much tapped out. “I’ll be right out.” The curtain falls lightly back into place.

Tony puts his hands on his knees, intending to stand up, but doesn’t. On the way in, he’d been too worried about the mission, too nervous about what he was going to say to Bruce, to process the fact that he was going to have to leave without him. He’s not used to not getting what he wants, to _I’m Tony Fucking Stark_ not being able to blast open every door. He’s been able to crack it open a bit, but Bruce is the one who’s going to have to walk out.

He tries to stand again, putting a little more conviction into it, but a hand on his own freezes him.

“I want you to know,” Bruce says quietly, “that everything you’ve done, all this effort--”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Tony says, sharper than he means to, but he can’t bear to hear humble gratitude when Bruce has already been humiliated in every way possible. He tries to stand and walk away and also to not let go of Bruce. Tony’s palm is dry and a little rough, the hand of a maker, but Bruce’s is smooth, his grip light.

“You don’t understand,” Bruce says. “It’s never been like this before. I’ve always been alone.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, giving Bruce’s hand a quick squeeze and letting it drop. “One of many habits I guess you need to unlearn.”

Tony moves toward the door, not sure how much more of this he can take without the embarrassment of having to ask Natasha for a tissue. Halfway there, he stops.

“If you’re ever pissed off at me in the normal, non-Hulk way, I hope you’ll tell me. I don’t want you to feel like you have to hold back because I gave you a job or a place to stay. You _deserve_ those things. So promise you’ll let me know, okay? If I’m ever being more of a jackass than usual.”

Bruce looks back at him with eyebrows raised and a baffled smile on his face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says. “But you have my word.”

Tony heads for the exit just as Natasha appears again. 

“‘Bye, Bruce,” she says. “See you soon.”

“I hope so.” He’s standing there with his arms folded, as if he’s seeing them off after a friendly visit. “Thanks for everything. Careful on the way out; they keep dogs around here. Big ones. Dobermans, I think.”

At the foot of the stairs, Clint emerges from the shadows, security lights glinting off the shiny black of his bow. 

“Hey there, Clint,” Tony says, as Clint moves in to cover their retreat. 

“Hey, Tony,” Clint says. “Everything okay with Bruce?”

“Yeah, I think it’s going to be fine.”

“Good, good,” he says, eyes searching the darkness. “Hey, did you catch the Knicks game last night?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Be sure to check out the [beautiful fanart](http://stargazer-7.livejournal.com/3828.html) that [stargazer-7](http://stargazer-7.livejournal.com) created for this chapter.

“I thought the HYDRA M.O. seemed a little too good to be true.” 

Nick Fury is taking Tony’s confession surprisingly well, perhaps helped down by the vodka martini in his hand, the last pink rays of a sweet May evening glinting off the arches of the Chrysler building. Tony’s glad now that he didn’t take Natasha up on her offer to “go to the principal’s office” with him, especially since after she’d said it, he’d been unable to stop thinking about her with teased hair, ripped jeans and a cigarette. 

“I would have come to you first,” Tony says, “but until I talked to Bruce, I didn’t know how far down it went. Or up.” Tony tries to work a little apology into his tone, since he’s basically admitting that he thought Nick was capable of keeping Bruce locked up as his personal circus animal.

“No, I get it,” Nick says. “I don’t know if Banner mentioned it, but I encouraged him to go along with the nice doctors. He was seriously messed up after what happened to you. They were talking about leaving him on that ice floe down south, building some corral for him at Nellis. This way seemed more humane--keeping it in the family, as it were.”

Tony’s touched, because it is isn’t Nick’s business to care about them individually beyond what operational necessity requires.

“I could pretend to be shocked to find a conspiracy right under my nose, but the fact is that these ambitious sons of bitches breed like cockroaches,” Nick continues. “What I really need are a quarter of the staff and a lot more independence, but the Council will give me that when the moon’s green.” He runs a hand down the long thigh of his black jeans, considering. In the jeans and a gunmetal gray shirt he doesn’t exactly look approachable, but it’s a reminder to Tony that Fury wears a costume, too. “There are guys in the sub-basement who’ve had the same offices since the Cold War, but this kid Park--” Tony knows his name from the files he wasn’t supposed to see “--he’s young, and he’s trying to take the elevator straight up.”

“To the Director’s office, you mean?” Tony feels a strong desire to cut the cable on Assistant Director Park’s car. He was the one who’d taken Project Catalyst out of some file drawer and given it enough of a scientific veneer to appeal to a bunch of people who ought to have known better. “I suppose there’s no point mentioning that Bruce is a human being who’s entitled to decide whether he wants to be kept on a leash by some asshole bureaucrat.”

“Present company excepted, you mean,” Nick says with what Tony hopes is a smile. “Unfortunately it’s standard for human rights to go out the window when people are scared. The Atomic Age, the Age of Terror, and now the Age of Monsters--we went a little crazy each time, but each time we got back on track. This time I’m not so sure. Hostile aliens, genetically engineered monstrosities--the things under the bed, the things from nightmares are coming to life. That’s why people need the Avengers. They need to know that our guys are as strong as the bad guys, but that our guys are _good_ , and that makes them better. Leave aside what it would do to Banner, turning the Hulk into just another monster is the wrong approach. The Hulk has to be a hero.”

“ _Bruce_ is a hero,” Tony says. “Even if you can’t buy his action figure at F.A.O. Schwarz.”

“You know what people like even better than heroes? Sure things. That’s what Park and his gang are offering, and that’s why we have to discredit them.”

“We?” Tony says, his hopes lifting a little with the warm spring night. “Are you serious? Because if you are, I have a proposal for you.”

“It scares me when a billionaire tries to sell me something.” Nick eats the olive from the bottom of the martini and taps the empty toothpick against his glass. “I’m going to need another drink.”  
+++++

 

It’s a little more than two weeks later when they get the call, an undramatic text from Fury asking if they could please get their asses to HQ pretty damn quick. Tony’s in Malibu, Pepper is in Taiwan, and the molecular finish on the Mark VIII is barely dry, but there’s monster trouble in the Mediterranean, so everything else will have to wait. Tony delivers his customary exit line to his executive team (“Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, I have to go save the world”) and within a few hours he and the suit are being loaded onto SHIELD’s tricked-out Boeing Globemaster along with the other Avengers. 

“I heard the creature is a _minotaur_ ,” Steve says, like he’s anticipating a 16-ounce steak. “That’s right up your alley, Thor.”

“This is a mythological creature? Not all of your Earth gods know each other, you know.” Thor leans forward and lowers his voice to confidential whisper. “I suspect some of them aren’t even real.”

The crew is in the last stages of loading people and weapons and crappy self-heating meals when Clint, seated in the jump next to him, nudges Tony.

“Hey,” he says, pointing out the airplane’s open tail section. “Look who.”

It takes another few moments for Tony to pick out Bruce’s silhouette, a blue button-down shirt in a sea of camo. 

He’s not alone, of course. He boards the plane with what looks like an honor guard but is probably just a plain-old guard flanking him: in the front, Dr. Medina and a baby-faced man in a dark suit, and behind, four SHIELD square heads in black leather. Tony’s first reaction is surprise, because although he’d expected--hoped--that they’d let Bruce come to the party, he’d thought they’d probably transport him separately, in something more rage-proof than a flimsy aluminum tube. His second thought is more of a general _oh, shit_ at the thought that if Bruce hadn’t been able to do what Tony had advised him to do, then they were all going to be parachuting out of this plane lot sooner than planned.

“He’s wearing some kind of medical device,” Clint says. Tony squints and can see a black rectangle hanging over Bruce’s right hip, a couple of wires and tubes snaking under his cuff. 

The Avengers register this with indignation, hidden or not according to their abilities. They all know what Nick and Tony have planned, but the effect of seeing Bruce marched in like a prisoner makes Thor grip his hammer, Steve frown and pop a few veins, and Natasha hum a pop tune while digging her nails into Clint’s arm. 

Fury strides into view and stops the boarding party before it can go any further.

“Mr. Park,” he says, looking down at the baby-faced suit. “Do you want to tell me why you think this is a good idea? Because this is not looking like a good idea.”

“Of course, Director,” Park says, in an eager, nasal tenor that kicks Tony’s dislike up ten points. “As I indicated in my memo, we can demonstrate that Banner--”

“ _Dr._ Banner,” Fury says.

“That _Dr._ Banner is completely under control and no danger to this aircraft or this operation. I thought a demonstration would be reassuring to _other_ personnel,” he says, nodding in the direction of the Avengers, who don’t nod back.

“All right,” Fury says. He’s wearing his standard scowl, but Park takes that as enough of an endorsement to pull a large control box out of his briefcase and begin fumbling with it. 

“If I could have your attention please,” he calls out, whiny voice fighting with the engines revving.

“Over here, now!” Fury calls, and a minute later there’s a small crowd gathered around.

“For those of you who don’t already know, this is Bruce Banner,” Park says, “otherwise known as the creature called the Hulk. Mr. Banner--”

“ _Dr._ Banner,” Natasha says.

“Yes, thank you, Dr. Banner.” Park pauses to adjust his glasses and regain his momentum. “We’ve developed a technique to allow us to summon the Hulk as needed, but also to prevent Dr. Banner from transitioning in an untimely manner. We’re going to demonstrate now. Are you ready, Dr. Medina?”

Tony’s been avoiding Bruce’s eyes because he’s afraid of what he might give away. It’s okay to look now, because Bruce’s attention is on Dr. Medina and everyone else’s is on Bruce. Tony has seen Bruce in the helpless moments before transformation, a shockingly intimate thing--fear and reluctant surrender, anticipatory regret. But he’s also seen Bruce around bad guys, people who had no idea what the Hulk was capable of or thought that it might be fun or profitable to provoke him into action. Bruce has that look on his face now, the look of someone watching two equally stupid drivers about to run into each other. Anyone else might feel humiliated by the scrutiny, at his helplessness at the hands of some idiot bureaucrat about to dump who knows what kind of electricity or chemicals into his body. Bruce just looks like a bystander at the birthing of a very bad idea.

“First,” Park says, turning a dial, “we can raise the stress hormone levels in Dr. Banner’s bloodstream. This will make him more receptive to the actuator, which will only be applied in a ‘live fire’ situation.” Bruce twitches, just slightly, and Tony can see some kind of liquid start to move through the tube.

There’s an uncomfortable silence as everyone stares at Bruce, tense with anticipation, waiting to see whether he’s going to Hulk out or pass out first. Sweat breaks out on Bruce’s forehead and he begins to tremble, breath shallow and fast. It’s more horrible than Tony imagined, more so because he knows that the whole scheme is not a reaction to fear but a desire to _own_ Bruce and the being inside him, a kind of naked exploitation that’s so far from science that Dr. Medina has good reason to look embarrassed.

It’s like watching a thunderstorm rolling in across a bay. As his shaking intensifies, Bruce’s pupils turn dark and his hands clench into fists. 

“Now,” Bruce says to Park, voice becoming guttural, monosyllabic. “Now would be good.”

“Not quite yet, Dr. Banner.” Park’s face has gone a little pink, whether with satisfaction or fear, Tony has no idea. “I want to demonstrate that we can control the transition even once it’s underway.”

“How?” Natasha asks. 

She’s got her professional face on, bland and beautiful, but Tony knows she’s probably imagining the things she’d like to do to Park. She’s more creative in that department than Tony.

“A low-voltage electric shock,” Park says. “Administered directly to the hypothalamus.”

At that moment, the sound of ripping fabric seems to echo off the metal walls of the plane like thunder. A couple of the tough-looking agents flinch and reach for their sidearms. 

Park jams a button on his console with sudden and sensible urgency. Bruce goes rigid, eyes rolling back, and lets out a faint cry of pain. Out of the corner of his eye, Tony can see Steve doing his best to restrain Thor, who clearly feels a hammering coming on.

Park and the doctor hold onto Bruce’s arms as he sinks to his knees, shaking the shock off like you would a taser hit but still weak from adrenaline, the aborted transformation, or just the horror of having the intimate details of his physiology pimped out in front of a crowd of uniformed strangers. Tony had been thinking in terms of Bruce being treated like an animal but now it seems more that they’re treating him like a child, someone who can’t be trusted with agency over his own body.

“Tell me this ends soon,” Clint says in a rough whisper behind Tony. “Or there may just be some projectiles flying around here.”

“Soon,” Tony agrees, though in truth he can’t promise anything. It’s all on Bruce, who doesn’t seem to have control of his biological systems, let alone his destiny.

The crowd begins to wander off, reassured or ashamed. Bruce, still on his knees, raises his head slowly and looks right at Tony, as if he’s known all along that Tony was watching him. He may be trying to communicate something, but Tony doesn’t register much beyond the fact that there are tears in his eyes.

+++++

Except for the mild suspense of wondering whether Bruce will Hulk out and kill them all, the flight is horribly boring. Tony misses the full-sized bed and massaging shower from his Gulfstream but knows it would be tacky to say so. Steve, in his element, is teaching Thor how to play stud poker; Natasha and Clint have fallen asleep, hands touching quite accidentally. Bruce is asleep, too, though it doesn’t look restful; he’s handcuffed to his seat and the tug at his wrist keeps waking him up as he tries in vain to find a comfortable position. 

When the loathsome A.D. Park goes to bend Fury’s ear about something, Tony sees Dr. Medina rise from her seat next to Bruce and head his way. Tony closes his eyes, still too pissed to want to give her any encouragement.

“Mr. Stark?” Her voice is soft and anxious in his ear.

“Oh, hi,” he says. “Dr. Medina, right? I assume it’s still _Dr._ Medina, unless the AMA has found out what you’ve been up to and pulled your license.”

“I want you to know I had nothing to do with any of this.” She gestures to the “this” involving Bruce wired up and in handcuffs tethered electrically to the world’s most assholish bureaucrat. “I only came along because I wanted Bruce to have a medical doctor in attendance.”

“It’s ‘Bruce’ now, is it? Good thing he has you to rely on and not his actual friends.” Tony enjoys the way Medina’s brow furrows with annoyance.

“The epinephrine pump and the electroshock--that’s from a completely different project,” she says. “Park showed up a couple of weeks ago. He said another lab had come up with a way to stop Dr. Banner from transforming at the wrong time. And since I’d found how to trigger the transformation, those two things could be combined to make the Hulk completely predictable and reliable.”

“Because _asking_ never works with Bruce.”

“Because, I suspect, Dr. Banner wouldn’t participate in the kinds of missions Park wants to use him for.”

“I suspect you’re right,” Tony says, parroting back Medina cautious, academic tone. “And now _you_ get all conscience-y all of a sudden because you realize the quasi-military top-secret global organization you work for is conducting weapons research. You know what I do with people like that at my company? I tell them they should have thought of that before, and then I fire them. Of course, I’m not in the business of kidnapping and torturing people, so there’s a lot less dissatisfaction.”

“I’m a contractor, Mr. Stark, not a SHIELD employee,” Medina says tightly. “I agreed to work on the project because it was a once-in-a-lifetime research opportunity, I won’t deny that. But after I spent some time with Dr. Banner, I found that he was--” She hesitates, maybe because she’s about to reveal the extent of her lack of scientific objectivity.

“He’s nice, isn’t he? Nice and funny and smart. He likes spicy food and bad sci fi movies. Almost like a real human being. “

“I’m not here to apologize or justify myself to you,” she says with much more firmness. “We _were_ making progress. We were getting closer to figuring out what triggers involuntary changes. What I showed Park was a step in that direction, but it’s not as crude or as predictable as Park’s telling everyone it is. So I wanted you to know, for your own protection. If they try to use the drugs and the trigger at the same time--there’s no way of knowing what could happen. That’s what I needed you to know.”

“I’d kind of guessed this was headed for flaming disaster,” Tony says, giving up any hope of sleeping on the flight. “That’s twice you’ve offered me vague, doom-y innuendos at no risk to yourself. So thanks for that.”

Tony folds his arms and closes his eyes as a way to signal to the doctor that he has important worrying to do, but he doesn’t hear her walk away.

“There’s something else,” she says. “He wanted me to give you a message.”

Tony cracks open an eye. “Yeah?”

“He says, ‘Everything is under control.’” 

Tony considers for a moment asking Medina if she knows Bruce well enough to know when he’s being sarcastic.

+++++

Tony must have fallen asleep after all, because when he snorts himself awake, there’s a general buzz of activity and one of the staffers hands him a meal. At least, it’s packaged like a meal, but it’s worse than anything Tony has put in his mouth since college. While he considers whether to eat a bite of “Fiesta Chicken” or use his fork to catapult it at A.D. Park, Steve (who scarfed down three of the “meals” in the time it took Tony to unpack his) comes over to sit next to him.

“Can you believe this?” Tony says. “ _Animal crackers_? Who saves the world on fucking animal crackers?”

“I saw that lady doctor talking to you,” Steve says, then lowers his voice. “Is she in on the plan?”

“What plan?”

“That’s what I want to know. Tony, you said we should all back off and not interfere with Bruce because that was the only way he was going to get out of this--situation.” After all this time, Steve still has trouble saying curse words. “Which is great, because I was pretty much ready to pop someone’s head off after that performance with the electric shocks. I want to help Bruce, but not at the cost of the mission, or if it endangers anyone else. I need to know what’s going on.”

“Okay,” Tony says, trying not to spit cracker crumbs. “Okay, that’s fair. So here’s the deal: the ‘trigger’ they keep talking about is a video. Specifically, it’s video of me getting hurt by the ice monster, by way of the Hulk.” Steve gets that look of righteous-person horror. “I know, I know. So I got him a copy of the video, disguised as something else, so he could practice _not_ transforming. That way, when A.D. Park turns on his little music box, he’s going to fail spectacularly.”

“So the plan is for Bruce _not_ to turn into the Hulk?”

“Pretty much.”

“You don’t see the problem with this plan? When there’s a minotaur involved?”

“Oh, but he’ll still be able to transform when he’s good and ready.”

“And you know he can do this?” Steve presses. “Resist all those drugs and emotions and then Hulk out at exactly the right time?”

“Not really. I haven’t seen him in weeks. But come on, it’s _Bruce_. He wouldn’t have let it get to this point if he didn’t have everything under control.”

Steve looks to where Bruce sits handcuffed between two SHIELD agents, meal balanced on his knee, trying to eat with one hand. Tony has to admit that he doesn’t seem in control of very much right now. 

The P.A. system crackles. “ _Attention. We’ve begun our descent to Sigonella Naval Air Station. Flight crew, begin preparation for landing._ ”

Tony knows better than to give Cap false assurances. “I promise you that at minimum, this isn’t any worse than it would have been with Park and his yahoos in charge. The more of Bruce there is in the Hulk, the better.”

“And you trust him after what happened in Antarctica?” Steve is using his Captain voice, hard-edged and bullshit-free.

Tony thinks of all the ways he could answer that: that he trusts Bruce to do his best; that the Hulk is no more or less capable of making mistakes than the rest of them; that the Avengers are stronger with him than without him, always. But he settles for answering with the first thing that came into his mind.

“Yes.”

+++++

When they reach the airbase there’s a huge scramble of people and materiel, and then they load onto a ship for the two-hour voyage to the private island of the minotaur master. The way Fury explains it, the guy is almost certainly a narcotrafficker but also a close “friend” of a number of politicians and newspaper editors, so they have to be careful with how they approach this high-monster-probability situation. The reports they’ve been getting from the island--cattle disappearing, weird bellowing at night, sightings of a massive man-beast--have been getting the _oh-those-wacky-villagers_ treatment in the press. But combined with SHIELD’s intel about the global monster supply chain, it adds up to someone wanting to make a splash on the international bad guy scene. 

Tony dozes, jet lagged and dry mouthed, and wakes up to the first blush of sunrise over an azure sea. He daydreams about a yacht and Pepper.

“Here’s how it’s going to go,” Fury says. “We’re going to land you on the south side of the island, closest to our friend’s compound. You’re going to be given flares and animal carcasses and various things that should attract the creature’s attention, if you don’t on your own. We have a three-stage line of defense: Thor and Stark will keep the creature busy while Barton hits it with tranquilizers. If that doesn’t work, we’ll send in the Hulk.” There’s a pause while everybody throws a doubtful side glance at Bruce.

“Sure,” Bruce says after a moment. “That’ll work.”

“The objective is to capture the creature, _not_ kill it. Once we get confirmation that the creature exists and is hostile, we’ll establish a beachhead and authorize Romanoff and Rogers to capture our guy, also alive. If the creature starts moving toward the village, I will authorize you to use lethal force, _provided_ you get authorization from me. Any questions?”

“Do we have to use animal carcasses?” Tony asks. “That’s disgusting.”

“Let’s suit up,” Steve says, ignoring him. Fortunately for them both, it’s the invitation-slash-order Tony has been waiting weeks to hear.

The Mark VIII, like every suit before it, is pretty much the greatest thing that Tony’s ever imagined. He doesn’t preclude the possibility that maybe he’ll think of something even more incredible in the future, but for now it represents the pinnacle of human achievement ass-kicking-wise, so _hell yeah_ , he suits up where everyone can see him. Making the Mark VIII transportable was worth all the insane three-dimensional geometry just so the SHIELD boys can look on his mighty boner-inducing work and despair.

They stand on the bow of the ship in the misty golden half-light of a Mediterranean morning. It’s the first time in months all the Avengers have been together, and each time it happens Tony feels humbled, or at least as humbled as Tony’s capable of feeling. It’s an honor and a privilege and a huge fucking rush to work with them, and his heart is beating 14 bpm above baseline, according to his visual display. 

The uncomplicated joy of getting ready to kick ass lasts until Bruce appears, flanked by two of the square heads. He’s in one of those institutional shirt-and-pants combos, looking grayer than usual, too thin and too stubbly, and the minor discourtesy of not letting Bruce attend to basic grooming makes Tony as angry as much as the more obvious mistreatment.

“Hey,” Tony says, pointing a finger at each of the square heads. “You’re not in the Avengers. Who said you could come?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, moving to flank him, all pecs and intimidation. “Fury said we were going in alone for jurisdictional reasons. You guys know something we don’t? Or don’t you take orders from the Director?”

The square heads scowl, exchange shrugs, and disappear with Bruce back into the cabin.

“We’re not leaving without Bruce,” Steve says. “I assume nobody’s got a problem with that.”

Everybody nods and murmurs and Tony feels a little eye-sting of gratitude, especially since they said “Bruce” and not “The Hulk.”

After a few minutes Bruce returns, alone. He’s still wearing the medical pack on his hip, and he’s wearing glasses--not his wire-rimmed, professorial ones, but something chunky and thick-rimmed.

“I suspect these glasses have some hidden purpose,” Thor says.

“You suspect right,” Bruce says. “They’re only going to let me play if I stay on the leash.”

Thor looks puzzled, but everyone else looks appropriately pissed off. 

“Okay,” Steve says. “If that’s the way we have to play it, that’s how we’ll play it. Whatever it takes, Bruce.”

“Thanks,” Bruce says, and Steve gives him a thump on the shoulder that should knock him over, but instead makes him grin.

“Let’s go kick some minotaur behind,” Steve says, and jumps over the edge of the boat. Luckily, there’s a smaller landing craft waiting below.

Tony and Thor reach the shore under their own power, Tony cooling the afterburners so as not to startle the sheep.

Tony has to admit that the bad guy has good taste. Green fields slope toward the steep, rocky coastline, and in the distance Tony can see a towering, white washed villa, pointy cypress trees guarding it like soldiers.

“This is a beautiful place,” Bruce says, peering over the cliff edge to the ink-blue water below. “I wouldn’t mind living here, if I were a monster.”

“It seems like they treat their monsters better here,” Natasha says. “If you _were_ a monster, maybe you’d be handing them a resume.”

There are a million things Tony wants to add to that, but they’re all mic’d up, so for once in his life he keeps his trap shut and watches Steve unpack the monster-attracting kit.

“What, no nylons or chewing gum?” Steve says nothing but tosses what appears to be a squirrel carcass at Tony’s feet. 

As it turns out, there’s no special equipment needed. A bellow rings out through the soft morning air. It sounds like a bullhorn being murdered by a troop of macaques. A moment later a second bellow joins the first in a horrible duet. Then a third. Then a fourth.

“I’m a city girl,” Natasha says. “Somebody want to tell me those are sheep?”

“Nope,” Clint says, as a couple of brown blobs crest over the hillside. “Not unless the sheep here walk upright.”

Clint draws an arrow, Thor hefts Mjolnir, and a few seconds later the beasts lumber into view. They’re at least nine feet tall with huge, horned heads, man-like but covered with shaggy, dark fur. Like the yeti, they look half-formed, like somebody sketched a rough outline but forgot to fill in the details. The long, pointy horns are plenty well defined, though. Tony silently addresses the nanites surrounding him: _I hope you guys can handle some piercing_.

“Well, shit,” Steve says. There’s a chirp as he engages his comm. “You seeing this, Director? I’ve got a new plan of attack. If we lure the creatures to the cliff edge here, we might be able to throw some of them over it. If they’re too strong for us, we can still escape that way. All we have to do is make it to the boat.”

“ _That works_ ,” Fury says. “ _Survival first, but keep one of the creatures alive if you can, you copy? And if you can’t stop them and they make a move toward the village, we’re sending in gunships._ ”

“Roger that,” Steve says. “One more thing: we’re definitely going to need the Hulk.”

“ _Banner?_ ” Fury says. “ _You ready to go?_ ”

“Sure, any time someone wants to start my engine.”

“ _Affirmative. A.D. Park is starting the process now_.”

“This is such bullshit,” Clint says, apparently not caring about the comm link. “Bruce never had any trouble transforming before when we needed him. Fucking bureaucrats just want to take credit for it.”

Fortunately for the team, the minotaurs are lumbering creatures, wobbling along on hoof-like feet that seem too small for their huge mass. With the help of his onboard cameras, Tony can watch both the creatures’ approach and Bruce, who’s beginning to tremble as the drugs take effect.

“Tony, Thor--” Steve says. “I’m going to need you to fly over the creatures and take a couple of shots at them so we get an idea of how powerful they are.”

“Sure thing.” Tony doesn’t have to be asked twice. He’s got more power than he knows what to do with and an apparent talent for annoying monsters. 

“Wait,” Steve says. “Hold up. Let’s get the Hulk into position first.”

“You sure you want to do that?” Bruce’s voice sounds raw and strained; Tony figures it’s from the meds. “Once the genie’s out of the bottle you’re not going to be able to put him back in.”

“I’ve always found the Hulk to be most cooperative in battle,” Thor says. Tony wants to agree, but watching how Bruce is shaking, how the veins are standing out in his neck even while he’s still all Bruce, Tony wonders if a turbocharged Hulk is such a good idea.

“ _Initiating the trigger_ ,” Park says over the comm, voice high-pitched with excitement. 

Tony sees the way Steve is looking at Bruce and it’s only then that he thinks about what the trigger is. In the middle of this fresh attack, Bruce is being forced to watch the last one, the one that ended with blood on the snow. Everything is different now; it’s a blue, cloudless morning and the air smells like salt and flowers. But Bruce is trapped in a memory, at the chemical mercy of people who don’t understand that what’s going on in his brain is far more complex than any lever they can pull. Tony’s been trying for weeks to push the other way, thinking of it as an engineering problem, and now he’s realizing that it has very little to do with Bruce’s good intentions or hard work or willingness to suffer. Their lives may depend on Bruce’s ability to forgive himself.

For the first time that morning, Tony is scared.

For a long moment, everybody looks at Bruce, trying to ignore the bellowing of the quickly closing minotaurs but also ready to clear the hell out if he blows.

“ _What’s happening, Park?_ ” Fury’s anger comes through clearly over the comm. “ _You said it would take 10 seconds_.”

“ _I don’t know-- I thought-- Give me a few more minutes. Maybe more drugs-- Or if Dr. Medina--_ ”

“Stark, Thor, go in _now_ ,” Steve barks. “Buy us some time.”

Tony blasts off, wishing he could stay to watch A.D. Park go down in flames, but the minotaurs are within spitting distance. He starts with some warm-up repulsor bolts directed at the ugly heads of the creatures. They flail with their human-like hands and toss their horns, but it doesn’t have much effect. He tries again with the chest RT, and this time they stagger back a bit, but still no K.O.

Thor, meanwhile, is cooking up a mini weather system, mostly in tornado form because the clear blue sky doesn’t have the ingredients for lightning or rain. He hurls Mjolnir again and again, clonking the creatures on the chest and head. Tony sees a black-fletched arrow whizz by and knows that Clint has joined the party.

“The creatures have thick hides,” Thor says on the comm. “I fear it may take us a long time to subdue them.”

“ _Last chance, Park._ ” Fury snarls. There’s nothing but silence from the idiot end of the comm. 

On his display, Tony can see Bruce, head down and fists clenched, tense and sweating, but still fully human.

“Uh oh,” Clint says. “We’ve got tourists.”

Tony sees dark shapes silhouetted at the crest of the hill and zooms higher to get a better view. Sure enough, there are a dozen or so locals, cell phones out, taking in the best blockbuster they’re going to see all summer.

“Get the creatures moving,” Steve says. “Toward the south cliff face. I’m going to tell those civilians to back off.”

Tony can see where Natasha is setting up some kind of tripwire--a neat old trick that the minotaurs will probably fall for. The problem is, the minotaurs don’t want to move. Their resistant hides are taking all the Avengers can dish out, and it’s making them angrier. Their flailing has more purpose now; Tony moves for a close-range blast and one of the needle-sharp horns almost pricks him. He does not want to find out what sort of nasties are loaded on the tip.

“Okay, but we’re going to need help,” Tony says.

“ _Banner, you’re authorized to remove the medical equipment. Do whatever you have to do_ ,” Fury says.

Tony has to stop himself from cheering as Bruce yanks off the glasses, pulls the needles out of his arm, and throws the black box on the ground. He pauses a moment in his attack to enjoy a green and glorious Hulk out.

It doesn’t happen.

“Bruce?” he says, as Bruce passes a hand over his forehead. “You okay?”

“Can’t do it,” he whispers. “I can’t transform.”

“You can’t--” Tony leaves the minotaurs to Clint and Thor for a moment so he can concentrate. “Bruce, everything’s fine. Look, the townspeople are moving away.” The townspeople are actually taking photos of the American superhero in the very tight uniform trying to shoo them away, but no matter. “It’s just us and the monsters, buddy. Come on.”

“No, I mean I really can’t.” Bruce is kneeling now, elbows on thighs and forearms wrapped around his middle, as if he’s in pain.

Steve has used one of his flares to get the townspeople to step off, so Tony calls down to him. “Hey, Cap! Can you hold things down for a minute?”

“You bet,” Steve says, running in shield-first.

Tony zips over to where Bruce is kneeling, still at the landing site, the monsters’ backs to him. Tony kneels beside him as well as he can in the suit and takes off his helmet so they can’t be overheard.

“What is it?” he asks quietly. “Is it the drugs?” He’d like to touch Bruce’s shoulder or rub his neck, but he doubts a nanocarbonite gauntlet is going to be all that comforting.

“No,” Bruce says, head down. “I don’t think so, I just--I spent so long practicing _not_ transforming, I think I have--” He stops, and still won’t look at Tony.

“Some kind of mental block? Or maybe--is this like performance anxiety? I mean the stage fright kind, not the other kind. Although, when you think about it--”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Bruce says, desperate. “This is horrible, letting you all down, after everything you’ve done--”

Tony realizes then that if Bruce fails to perform, they’re not only slightly fucked from the monster perspective, but there’s a bigger and worse problem. Because if the Avengers win the battle without Bruce, he’ll apologize and congratulate everyone else, but if anyone gets hurt, he won’t get over it, ever. And _ever_ for the Hulk is a very long time.

It’s not easy to think straight amid the bellowing and thunder. Natasha has finished setting up her snare and is now using good ol’ fashioned firepower to drive the minotaurs closer to the cliff, but they’re fighting back with more precision now, as if they’re learning about their enemies as they go along. Clint’s given up on the tranquilizer arrows and is using the exploding kind instead, well enough that he’s brought one of the creatures to its knees by finding its Achilles hoof. It’s not impossible for them to do this without the Hulk, although the longer the battle goes on, the greater the risk that the minotaurs will figure out a way to turn the tide.

And then there’s Bruce, slumped in defeat, panting through his open mouth because his heart is probably going 200 beats per minute, the chemicals in his body saying _yes_ but his brain saying _no_ , that overachieving brain that’s he’s been training so hard to resist the urge to give in to despair. It would be ironic if he’d finally figured out a way to suppress the Hulk at the very moment his own life and the lives of others depend on it. Tony knows there’s a reason he’s always hated irony.

“Do you think maybe you’re cured?” Tony asks. 

“Don’t think so,” Bruce says with a twisted smile. “The other guy’s still there. I just don’t know what to do to coax him out.” He raises his eyes long enough to glance at the battle. Between the bright sunshine and the drugs, his pupils are practically pinholes. “You’d think a bunch of screaming monsters would be enough.”

The sensible thing would be to tell Cap what’s up so he can tell Bruce to go back to the ship, where A.D. Park and his band of idiots will no doubt be waiting to explain how their little mistake can be corrected with a few more drugs and a few more months of captivity. Or Bruce can wait out the battle and escape somewhere with Thor afterward, to some nice planet with sun and sand and no possibility of ever coming home.

Those would be sensible things to do, and Tony lets himself savor them for a moment with sweet, nostalgic regret. Tony has no intention of doing the sensible thing; he’s going to do the _right_ thing, because problem solving is his curse as surely as a big, green monster is Bruce’s. It’s like that moment in New York when the missile was heading for them and Tony realized _I’m a missile, too_. 

He gives himself a few seconds to think of everything he loves about life--Pepper, the suit, his work, his toys--and then he runs toward the battle, helmet still off, right up to the angriest and least-injured of the minotaurs and gives him a full-on chest blast.

A lot of things happen at once: Bruce, Thor and Steve all yell at him, variations of _What the hell are you doing?_ The monster gives an enraged yodel and wheels clumsily around. Natasha and Clint have to hold their fire because the minotaur lists from side to side as it turns, leaving Tony exposed.

“Oh, God,” Bruce chokes. “Don’t do this. Please.” Tony doesn’t have to turn his head to know that Bruce is still on the ground, still human.

Tony expects the monster to crack his unprotected head like a walnut, but instead it rears back, tilts its horns down, and takes aim straight at Tony’s heart. Tony can see the tips of its horns glinting with something metallic, and has no doubt that it’s all for him, the most famous and most obnoxious of the Avengers, the one any rich bad guy in the world would like to stuff and mount on his wall.

“Tony! Are you hurt?” Steve calls. “Do you need us to pull you out?”

He can get away on his own, of course. All he has to do is blast off; in seconds he can be hundreds of meters above the fray. 

Instead he stands his ground and tries not to think of all the _ifs_ : if Bruce can still transform, if the sight of Tony about to be gored will spur him to action or shock him into inertia; if Tony’s going to doom them both with his act of desperate hope.

Holding still is the hardest thing he’s ever done in his life, harder than having a cold gun barrel pressed to his temple. He can see the creature’s enormous forehead, its dripping snout, its black marble eyes. It smells like the old buffalo hide blanket in his father’s den. A sweet memory comes over him, and he almost gives in to the temptation to close his eyes.

Just before the tip of the minotaur’s horn closes in something hits him, hard, and shoves him out of the way. For a soaring moment he thinks it’s the Hulk, but then he sees that it’s Bruce, nobody but Bruce, and in the time it takes Tony to transfer his fear from his own impending death to Bruce’s, the tip of the beast’s horn touches Bruce’s chest. 

Tony has seen Bruce transform before, been pierced to the heart by that last, desperate look before the loss of control, but that’s not what he sees now. When Bruce’s eyes meet his, all he can see is the purest and most grateful relief. Then Bruce’s eyes flutter closed and his features relax, just for a second, before twisting again in pain. 

There’s a spurt of blood, a cry cut short, and then only green as Bruce expands, enlarges, transfigures into what he’s always been.

The Hulk literally grabs the bull by the horns and gives a vicious wrench. The creature thrashes briefly and then falls heavily to the ground, neck broken.

“That was well timed!” Thor says, hoisting Mjolnir for another blow. 

Tony, too happy and surprised to stay focused, doesn’t see the minotaur kick out its leg as it shifts to dodge the hammer. The hairy leg sends Tony flying and he lands hard a few feet away, body insulated by the suit but neck rebounding hard enough to give him minor whiplash. The minotaur gives a nasty, gloating snort and Tony lets him have it with the repulsors, but as before, he doesn’t seem to do much but annoy it. He starts to struggle to his feet but then wonders if he’d be smarter to stay down with his suit-end pointing at the creature. While he muddles this over, the creature wastes no time in bending over him, stamping, ready to bring his boss his trophy.

“Hey!” Tony calls, still flat on his back like a capsized turtle. “Guys! I could use a little help here!”

The Hulk lifts his head, grunts, and looks at Tony with fierce attention. Tony wonders if he should have kept his mouth shut and taken his chances with the minotaur, but it’s too late now. Those brown eyes, so disturbingly like Bruce’s, dart back and forth between Tony and the minotaur, which is snorting out a prelude to killing him.

“Tony?” There’s fear in Natasha’s voice, which means things are very bad indeed.

“It’s fine,” he calls back. “Just--give us some space, okay?” 

They all know how this movie turned out the last time, Bruce best of all, but Tony doesn’t know how much of Bruce is here. When the Hulk bares his teeth, flexes his muscles, and reaches out to destroy, all Tony can think is _I must be really stupid to let this happen twice_.

The Hulk’s massive hands land on the minotaur’s shoulders, and the beast tries to shake him off. But the Hulk isn’t someone who can be ignored; he can cold-cock a god, snap the neck of a mythological beast. He pulls the minotaur off balance, making it stumble backward.

What follows is the epic monster battle of Tony’s dreams, a snarling, staggering clash of pure, adulterated muscle between genetic monstrosities that should never have existed but _shit_ , they’re amazing to look at. Tony’s having as much fun and feeling about as scared as when he and Pepper watch shark programs in 3D.

“Hey, Stark!” Clint yells. “You taking a nap, or what? Come on!” Tony pulls himself together and runs back to pick up his helmet like a kid getting an out-of-bounds ball.

With one minotaur down and one being Hulk-handled, it’s a lot easier to manage the other two; within minutes, Tony and Cap manage to get one to their knees thanks to the revelation that the creatures are top-heavy. _Bad design_ , Tony thinks, and smirks under his helmet. 

The Hulk roars and Tony lifts his head in time to see him punch his minotaur to the ground and then, vast muscles straining, _lift_ it over his head. The beast struggles and bellows, and Tony thinks, _Sucks to be you; we’ve got a Hulk_. Tony expects the Hulk to spike it like a football, but instead he bends with his knees and hurls it, still complaining, over the side of the cliff.

They all stop for a moment to watch the shaggy beast sail over their heads; even Thor seems to be impressed. _This_ is why they need the Hulk, not just for the pure, brutal power but for the intention behind it. The five-year-old in Tony appreciates the _smash_ , but the fact is that the Hulk thinks and plans and works in his own way. Whether it’s Bruce’s mind that Tony detects--or thinks he detects--in there is beside the point. Tony has the suit, Thor has his hammer and Bruce has his Hulk, and if his mistakes are bigger it’s because everything about the Hulk is bigger, but they aren’t a team without him. 

Clint figures out a way to finish off Tony and Cap’s minotaur by shooting into its gaping mouth, right up through the palate and into its brain. It convulses and then goes still and things get a lot quieter with only one minotaur left on the hoof.

“Send it this way,” Natasha calls, and Tony remembers the tripwire. Together, they herd the creature toward the cliff edge. It doesn’t go easily--a backhand sends Clint tumbling--but they distract it well enough that its beady eyes don’t see what its clumsy feet are doing until they’re tangled in the wire. It flails, trying to find its balance, the greatest YouTube video ever if it weren’t unbelievably top secret. As it pitches over the cliff, they all draw near to watch the _splat_ and it’s then that Tony sees what Natasha spent so long setting up: a huge net designed to catch and enclose the monster.

“Super cool.” Tony says as he watches it thrash around. “How are they going to get it home?”

Natasha shrugs. “I don’t know. Not my problem.”

“ _We’ve got it covered_ ,” Fury says over the comm. “ _A special vessel’s on its way. Romanoff, Captain--you’re cleared to go secure our target. Forces will meet you .5K north, toward the residence. Everyone else, we’ll see you at the landing site when you’re ready. Nice work, by the way. This arrest is gonna look good on CNN tonight._ ” Fury sounds positively smug. “ _One more thing--is the Hulk secure?_ ”

Tony turns around, half expecting to see the Hulk roasting a minotaur on a spit, but there’s just Bruce, naked on the green grass, arms wrapped modestly around his knees.

“Tony, look in the bottom of my backpack,” Steve says as he and Natasha go through their pre-mission check again. “Tell Bruce he did a great job.”

Bruce looks like he’s doing fine, so Tony does as instructed and rifles in Steve’s pack. Under the monster goodies, he finds an athletic bag with Bruce’s name on it.

“Hey, Bruce,” he says. “Isn’t this the bag from your locker?”

“Oh, yeah,” Bruce says, zipping it open. Inside is a change of clothes--Bruce’s own clothes, a long-sleeved shirt, slacks, and loafers, perfectly wrong for the weather. “That was thoughtful,” he adds, but doesn’t rush to put them on. “I haven’t been in the sunshine in a couple of months. It feels good. It’ll be a shame to go back.”

That last sentence sets Tony’s teeth on edge, but he doesn’t want to rip into Bruce while he’s tired and groggy from the transformation.

“Yeah, this is a nice place. I’m thinking of buying a house here. _That_ house,” Tony says, pointing to the bad guy’s mansion. “I bet it’s got nice stables. There’s no airport on the island, but that’s not a problem for Iron Man. It’s a great location, too, if I parked a yacht here I could--oh, for fuck’s sake, Bruce, tell me you’re not going back to that place.” Tony winces and snaps his jaw shut.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Bruce asks. Butt naked and with his chin resting on his knees he looks young and tentative, in spite of the grey hair and the lines on his face. “Has anything changed?”

“Are you kidding me? After everything that happened?”

“I don’t _know_ what happened. I don’t remember, remember? I look around and I see a lot of dead bulls and live people, so I guess everything’s okay, but I don’t _know_.” 

“It’s better than okay--you were amazing!” Tony can’t put the image in Bruce’s head, so he acts it out with his hands. “The first minotaur was about to attack me, and you snapped its neck with one twist. Then the second one, you picked it up _over your head_ , and you threw it, and it was like _groooonnnk_ , it was so pissed, and it landed, like, a hundred meters away, it was like the fucking minotaur _Olympics_. You saved my life, by the way, when it--”

“ _This_ time. So this time the other guy was helpful, but the next time--”

“Just _don’t_ , okay?” Tony runs a hand over his forehead. With his visor up his climate control doesn’t work as well, and he’s getting hot and cranky. “I’m not the guy to argue hypotheticals with. I’m not the guy for ethics and philosophy. I’m the guy who knows what works and this _works_. We were getting nowhere before you transformed, and as soon as the Hulk arrived, everything fell into place. And it’s not just the Hulk, it’s _you_. You don’t just show up and bring him along. You’re in there, I swear you’re in there--the way the Hulk figures things out, the way he uses mass and energy and inertia, that’s a fucking _physicist_ in there, Bruce. And even if you disagree, even if you still treat the other guy like your big, green cousin from the Bronx, _you’re_ the one who makes it possible. You go through all the hell and you don’t get to have any of the fun, but you still do it because we need you.”

Bruce gives that pleasant, forced smile. “Not such a team player this time, was I? I didn’t transform until my own life was in danger.”

Tony wishes there were a minotaur left to punch. He wishes he could open Bruce’s head up and see what’s going on in there, why a smart man fights so hard against simple truths.

“Which it was because you were trying to save my life,” Tony says.

“Which I was because you did something incredibly stupid and really, really--” Bruce stops and presses his fingers to his eyes. “Really brave. I can’t believe you did that. Tony, it could have gone so wrong.”

“I know,” Tony says. “But it didn’t.”

Bruce actually laughs at that. “I’m not going to win this argument, am I?”

“Do you want to? Seems like it would be a Pyrrhic victory, man. You can bug out, or you can let A.D. Park keep on disgracing the good name of science. Or you could come home.”

“Home,” Bruce says, such a sweet, sad word. His voice sounds like he’s thinking about it, but his smile says he’s already decided. They lapse into silence, Bruce’s tired eyes resting on the deep blue water dotted with the green cones of volcanic islands, and for once Tony thinks he can do more good by keeping his trap shut.

Clint and Thor wander up from where they’ve been keeping a tactful distance, inspecting the minotaurs and not obviously eavesdropping. 

“So what are we doing?” Clint says. “Don’t know about you guys, but I’d rather monitor the rest of the op from here, not the boat.”

“Good idea,” Tony says. “Also, I was thinking of lunch.” Tony flips down his visor and engages the satellite comm system. “JARVIS?”

“ _Ah, hello sir. I see you’re in the Mediterranean. How delightful._.”

“Yeah, it’s great. JARVIS, can you find a restaurant that delivers to my current location?”

“ _Of course, sir. It seems there are several highly rated options available. What type of cuisine would you prefer?_ ”

“Thor, do you like seafood?”

“I don’t care for rauðmagi, but I enjoy everything else.”

“JARVIS, lunch for six, hold the rooeythmah--what he said.”

Since JARVIS has been programmed with Tony’s taste for excess, what arrives 45 minutes later is a white-tablecloth setup with chilled white wine and enough antipasti and cheese to keep even Thor’s hunger at bay until Steve and Natasha get back. They follow the mission over the comm; the bad guy apparently isn’t so tough without his minotaurs and goes down without much of a fight. In due course there are sirens and helicopters and Steve is complaining that there are more reporters than police.

“ _Time to wrap things up_ ,” Fury says. “ _We’ll send the ship to the landing site in 20._ ”

“Uh, Director?” Tony says. Could you give us about another hour and a half? We have something to finish up here.”

“ _You still having some trouble?_ ”

“No, we just--” Tony looks at the covered plates of seafood and pasta being kept warm by the sun. “We need to do a mission debrief.”

“ _Can’t you do that on the ship?_ ”

“No.”

There’s a pause while Fury digests this and hopefully reflects on the fact that he has a bad guy and a live minotaur and a very shiny report to make back to the Council.

“ _Make it two hours. Just make sure you’re not too debriefed when you get back here._ ”

“Understood.” Tony reaches for another bottle of vernaccia.

“ _I want you all to know that following the extremely poor results this morning, I’ve suspended Project Catalyst and let Assistant Director Park know that I’m going to be conducting a full inquiry. Dr. Banner?_ ”

“Yes?” 

“ _There’s still the matter of your status to clear up, but you helped your case considerably with your performance today. If nothing else, I can guarantee that the return trip will be more comfortable for you than the one out._ ”

“Thank you, Director.” Bruce’s smile makes Tony feel like his heart is going to burst through the arc reactor, maybe cause a meltdown.

“I offer a toast,” Thor says, raising his glass. “To Óðinn Allfather, to our victory in glorious battle, and to those we love--may they come safely home again.”

They all drink, and then drink some more, but manage to keep their hands off the rest of the food until Natasha and Steve appear over the hill.

“Oh my God,” Natasha says. “Tony, you’re a nut. Please tell me there’s cannoli.” 

+++++

“I’m not an invalid; you don’t have to carry my bag,” Bruce says, trying to pry it from Tony’s hands. He’s been like this the whole way back, fidgety with anticipation, nervous and trying to hide it.

“No, but as your landlord, I want to go the extra mile for a valued tenant. Especially since the vacancy rate is creeping above 95 percent.”

“You should evict that strange guy in the penthouse,” Bruce says. “All those explosions and alien hot tub parties--he’s bad for business.”

That lasts them until they reach the door of Bruce’s condo and he just stands there, staring at the doorknob.

“It’s your place, Bruce,” Tony says quietly. “You don’t need an invitation. Not a vampire, remember?”

Bruce takes a deep breath and pushes open the door, revealing Pepper, caught in the act of putting fresh flowers on his coffee table. She jumps back, startled, spraying petals and pollen onto the spotless glass.

“I _knew_ there was something going on between you,” Tony says. “Pistols at dawn, Dr. Banner!”

Pepper runs right past him and throws her arms around Bruce. “It’s so good to have you home,” she says and gives him a kiss on the cheek. “It’s been too long.”

“It’s good to see you too, sweetheart,” Bruce says, flushing with what Tony trusts is strictly platonic pleasure.

“No kiss for her boyfriend, you notice,” Tony says. 

“You’re not allowed to complain,” Pepper says, arms still circling Bruce’s neck. “Neither of us is traveling for another week; we’ll have plenty of time to ourselves. So...I thought Bruce could join us for dinner. If you’re not too tired, Bruce.”

“Sounds great,” he says, “if it’s okay with Tony?”

“I don’t see why not. Did you cook a roast, dear?”

Pepper just snorts and gives him a little swat on the behind. “Tartuffo is delivering, if you’re not too sick of Italian, _dear_. Gotta go, I’ve got a teleconference. Bye, Bruce,” she says, extra sweet, giving him a peck on the cheek.

Tony’s not really sure why he stays behind, except that Bruce, when his smile fades with the scent of Pepper’s perfume, is standing there looking like he’s afraid to sit down on his own furniture.

“It’s okay for things not to be normal right away,” Tony says. “You know that, right? I’m not going to think you’re ungrateful if you don’t start jumping up and down on the bed and singing along with the radio.”

Bruce’s slumps down into the black leather sofa, limp with relief. “I _am_ grateful. And I’m really glad to be back. It’s just that--I don’t know how many more of these I have in me. The other guy stays the same, but I’m getting older. Fighting my way back gets harder every time. Even back to this.”

“I know.” Tony sits down next to him, not too close and not too far away. “I know what it’s like to put on a happy face for the world because that’s what they expect and then lie in bed at night wondering where you’re going to get the strength to get up the next day and do it again. But anything you need, anything that’ll help, you’ve got it--money and power and connections, the best engineers and the most bad-ass assassins. I could use that old cliche, _you’re not alone_ , but in your case that would be a pretty bad joke.”

A smile tugs at the corners of Bruce’s mouth. “Ever since this happened--since _he_ happened--I’ve lived in fear of people depending on me. Now look at me. And I’ve got a glass coffee table. How did I let this happen?”

“Tell me about it. Wanna run away and join the circus? I think we’d be a hit. You especially.”

That earns him the full-on Bruce Banner grin, all white teeth and a kind of world-weariness that’s gone past to despair come full circle to innocence. His eyes get bright, those expressive eyes that Tony has seen both golden and brown. When Bruce opens his mouth to speak, Tony braces himself to repel any expressions of gratitude, because Bruce owes him nothing.

“Any time,” Bruce says, “except tonight. I don’t want to disappoint Pepper.”

Tony smiles because it’s a joke, but also because it’s Bruce, always so quick to sacrifice even when the world had taken almost everything away. Tony is convinced that anything that lives that deep in Bruce must be part of the Hulk, too, because the Hulk is Bruce stripped down to the bare essence, and where the world sees rage, Tony sees fear and a need to protect. Tony knows where that fear comes from; he learned it from Pepper, and from Bruce. It isn’t the first time life smacked him upside the head to teach him a lesson, and Tony just considers himself lucky to be alive to collect the reward. 

“Better hurry up, then. You can’t trust that woman around calamari.” Bruce goes to wash up and Tony calls after him. “Calamari is squid, right? I wonder if we’ll get to fight, like, a mutant squid or octopus or something. That would be pretty cool, because I don’t know if I told you about the hydro pack, it’s good for depths up to--”

“You know,” Bruce says, exiting the powder room with his clean hands in the air doctor-style, “I was hoping for no monsters for a while. I just want to sit on the patio for a while in the sun with the Sunday paper. Maybe get out on the golf course.”

“Too late for that,” Tony says, trying and failing to keep a straight face because Bruce can’t either. “Welcome home.”


End file.
